How Does A Plastic Surgeon Incorporate Lasers Into A Primarily Surgical Practice?

One of the most common questions that other physicians ask me is “how do I incorporate lasers into my surgical practice?”

I am often called by a plastic surgeon, specializing in cosmetic surgery, who wants to know how he or she can begin to use lasers in their practice. It can seem exciting yet daunting to bring in a new procedure because of the level of knowledge and training required to properly treat patients and produce excellent results. And many times, physicians have limited time for further training once a busy practice has been established. In addition, lasers are expensive and most surgeons are not used to having to purchase expensive equipment beyond the initial investment in supplies to start a surgical practice. That being said, the laser procedures can help surgeons offer a much wider range of treatments that will benefit both the patient who has had surgery and the one who is not yet ready for surgery. I tell physicians and patients that laser procedures can be “insurance for your surgical procedure” in many ways. Laser procedures can help add to the result of surgical tightening by treating dyschromia, discoloration, texture, pore size, vascular lesions, and providing overall better skin health and appearance. One can pull the skin tighter with surgery, but the skin often needs surface treatment with laser procedures. Don’t just focus on achieving tighter skin, focus on overall better looking skin also. This may sound like a sales pitch, but you will hear me often say, “don’t put cheap tires on a Rolls Royce!” Surgical results will greatly benefit from maintenance laser procedures and good medical skincare. Finally, a laser procedure can often help a plastic surgeon treat a patient who does not really need surgery yet, so that the patient does not have to be referred elsewhere.

My advice always starts with telling fellow surgeons that

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Botox Training MD Special Offer

Botox Training MD CourseBotox Training MD has slashed their Botox training course membership for a limited time.

I'm not sure if this is just a temporary discount or a new pricing strategy but if you're in need of some botox or filler training this would be a great opportunity to snag all of this at a fantastic deal.

Check out what's included in this offer:

As A Botox Training MD Member You'll Have Access To Everything You Need To Know To Add High-Profit Botox & Dermal Filler Treatments To Your Practice:

  • Hands-On Botox & Filler Training Videos: Learn how to perform all common Botox and dermal filler treatments with 11 detailed video overviews and demonstrations; Brow lifting, crows feet, gummy smile, smile lift, lower face treatments and more!
  • Comprehensive Training & Resource Guides: Illustrated PDF treatment guides showing exactly how each treatment is performed and how it can be modified for the best results. Resource Guides show you where to find the best deals on products and services to grow your cosmetic practice, from legal services to marketing resources.
  • Insider Secrets From Experts: 5 interviews with physician experts that are already raking in cash that give you insider info on exactly what works; marketing, consultations, up-selling, pricing and more! Our experts spill the beans on everything from perfecting your consultation, to training your staff, to exactly how to prevent unhappy patients. These interviews give you access to information you can't get ANYWHERE else and are easily worth the membership all by themselves.
  • 5 Special Bonus Products: Q&A sessions, patient marketing tips, consent forms, before and after pictures for your use, and the special Ultimate Botox Guide, a 35 page patient marketing eBook to distribute to your existing or prospective clients to position yourself as the expert in your market!
  • FREE Botox Marketing Mini-Course: Just ask to be notified above (you don't have to by anything) and we'll send you a free mini-course on marketing your new cosmetic services! You'll find out how to set up your legal structure, where to outsource and where to do-it-yourself, and how to train your staff. It's completely free and without any obligation!

See the training course here: Botox Training MD

Free Webinar: How To Protect Your Professional Reputation Online

Reputation Webinar

Free Webinar: How To Control & OWN Your Business & Personal Reputations Online!

While I'll be teaching this for any business or professional who needs to own their own reputation, this is especially important for physicians.

Reputation management has become an incredibly hot and relevant topic with the rise of all of the review sites that are filled with flaming physician reviews. So, I'm going to be teaching a number of techniques and strategies for physicians who need to protect and control there reputations.... By the way, this is you.

Your business or medical reputation can be hijacked in seconds by a one unhappy patient, disgruntled employee or nasty competitor... but in just one hour, you'll discover exactly how to protect and OWN your personal and business reputations online without needing a phD in geek.

Here's some of what you'll learn:

  • What you should NEVER do when you're flamed online (but what almost everyone does)!
  • How to get negative reviews and comments removed!
  • What you should do IMMEDIATELY when your reputation is attacked!
  • How to make negative reviews and comments impossible to find!
  • What legal options you have!
  • The insider tips and tricks that the pros use to protect their own reputations!
  • How to get your existing patients to give you RAVING reviews!

This is a must-see webinar for any professional or business owner.

Thanks to Ryan over at Frontdesk for putting these together and getting everyone on board.

New Skin Clinic & Laser Center Products

There are a number of new product launches for physicians, skin clinics and laser centers coming.

The first three or four of these will be launched over the next two weeks or so and include a webinar on how to protect and control your online reputation, a Botox training membership site that teaches physicians how to add cosmetic Botox and fillers to their existing clinical practice, some videos on social marketing and building relationships, a course in creating additional revenue for surgeons, and quite a few others. These are being launched in conjunction with other physicians and businesses to have information and expertise that are of value to our community.

You can find all of the current medspa products and services here.

We are also working on integrating a number of new technologies into our systems and providing greater conductivity for our membersand will be rolling out some new systems in the (hopefully) near future.

One of the principles that we founded this site (and Freelance MD) on is the idea that there are many physicians who have information that is of value but that is siloed and unavailable outside of the confines of a medical conference or seminar.

One of our goals is to take that information, specialized knowledge and skill set and to make it much more widely available to physicians who want and need it. We're doing this by building information products and membership sites that allow very specialized information a broad reach and benefit both the author and the consumer.

We will be announcing a number of these products in the next few weeks... and besides just building in the announcements of these new products, I'll be diving into great deal of detail about how we produce this content and how physicians can benefit from it. My hope is that you'll take a look and give this new system a chance.

PS: As a side note, if you're a physician or medical service provider that has some specialized knowledge that  would benefit from a wider physician audience please contact us and let's discuss if there is a way that we get that online.

The American Society of Aesthetic Medical Professionals

We're happy to announce a new partner for Medical Spa MD, the American Society of Aesthetic Medical Professionals.

The American Society of Aesthetic Medical Professionals was founded by plastic surgeon Dr. Marc Scheiner and runs a number of Botox and filler injection training seminars, generally in the North East. Their training courses are attended by physicians, dentists, nurses, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners who are interested in adding Botox and fillers to their practice. You can find their main site here and view their upcoming course dates and registration page.

Their training training courses take place over 2 days. The first day of training is dedicated to Botulinum Toxin injections and the second day to dermal fillers. You may choose to attend one or both days of the course.

Here's some info about the course from the ASAMP site:

The courses assume you have no experience in aesthetic medicine and are designed to educate you in the evaluation and treatment of facial ageing using Botulinum Toxin and dermal fillers. You will be trained to inject Botulinum Toxin and dermal fillers with an experienced plastic surgeon. Participants in the certification courses will inject actual undiluted Botulinum Toxin and Dermal Fillers. You will find that many training programs use diluted Botulinum Toxin or normal saline. We will maximize your learning experience by replicating an actual client encounter using the correct product and live models. This is a hands-on course and you will be required to inject the products using a model that you bring.

After participating in many different training seminars it has become apparent that the most effective way to teach cosmetic injections is to have the participants provide their own models. Previous experience teaching injection methods using volunteer models has been unsatisfactory as often the models only want 1 or 2 areas treated. This leaves the participant without hands-on training in all areas. Furthermore, it is beneficial to the injector to actually see the results of his/her treatments in the weeks following the treatments. With a volunteer model, the participant will likely never see them again. Finding a model to inject Botulinum Toxin and dermal fillers requires you to simply bring a spouse, friend, brother, sister, mother, employee, or any other willing participant.

At the completion of your Botulinum Toxin and Dermal Filler training you will have the tools, as well as the confidence, to begin injecting Botulinum Toxin and Dermal Fillers on the day you return to your practice. In addition, as mentioned above, your course fee includes 12 months of complimentary telephone and/or e-mail support. If at the conclusion of your training, you feel that you are not able to begin injecting Botulinum Toxin or Dermal Fillers, you can repeat the course at no cost**. As you can see, our goal is to not only give you the absolute highest level of training but to provide you with on-going support as you begin to grow your aesthetic practice

There's always been a tremendous interest in training courses on Medspa MD. We hope that the inclusion of ASAMP and Botox Training MD will bring a valued asset to the commuity.

Understand Your Patient's Home Run In The Consultation Room

Before you leave the consultation room ask your patient this question: What's a 'home run' for you?

Consultations are where the money gets made in a medical spa but understanding and managing expectations with your cosmetic patients will keep you out of trouble, and your patients coming back. One of the very best ways to understand where your patient's head and expectations are is to ask, 'What's going to be a home run for you?'.

You're probably already trying to set expectations and get to know what your patient's after - you're in a consultation room after all - but I'm talking about some thing other than asking about 'What are you looking for?' or 'What are you trying to change?' which are the most common types of questions.

There's a lot you can do to increase your revenue in the consultation room. Don't miss the opportunity to set up your patient for the big win.

When you ask, 'What would knock the ball out of the park for you?', you're tapping in to some triggers that give you a much better feel for where the patient is, and creates a complete buy-in if you're able to align those 'big win' thoughts with manageable expectations. This is a part of the consultation that a lot of physicians miss by just asking general expectation questions like 'What are we trying to accomplish?' or 'What are you looking for?'. These kinds of milquetoast questions don't have any teeth.

The worst kind of ham-fisted consultation - and I've seen this - is just to hand a mirror to a patient and tell them to tell you what they don't like about their face. (A perfect example of a doc that never understood the psychology of buying and though of himself as a mechanic. Lame.)

Look, no one is coming in to your clinic with 'age management' as their goal. That's a totally goofy doc-talk deal. Patients are looking to drop 20 years. Once you've gone through the consultation you'll have a pretty good feel for if you're going to be in the running for making this patient happy or not. If you're not going to make the person thrilled, give careful consideration to treating the patient at all. But if you're pretty comfortable with the treatment and feel that you can deliver, ask the patient what they would consider to be a grand slam home run and then discuss it. Don't try to talk them down too far. They'll be pretty reasonable (or you'll see that you can't make them happy) if you give them some rope here.

Drive patient happiness.

Everyone likes to have happy patients. They don't sue you and if you're lucky, they'll tell a friend or two. But how often do you think of 'patient satisfaction' as a byproduct rather than the actual aim.

Setting up your consultation with this kind of 'big win' potential gives the patient a target to aim for and a peg to hang their hat on if you come close. If you deliver, the patient feels that it wasn't just an average treatment and that you really are the cosmetic guru you're website says you are, and if you fall short you're still in the ball park and all is not lost.

Managing your patients expectations should really be around finding the buy-in point of where this 'grand slam' outcome is, NOT the base hit of finding an adequate result. (I know there's a lot of baseball analogies in here.)

Don't create more patients. Create more zealots.

Meeting expectations creates another satisfied customer. Boring, and not the way to build your business. But if you can use the consultation to define what a 'big win' is, manage expectations around that end point and then deliver on those, you're creating a zealot, and zealots build your business for you.

Yes, you already have a few zealots. Everyone else does too.

What you're looking to do here is bump up the percentage of zealots that you produce, because they'll work tirelessly to drive new patient traffic.

This tiny change in the way you think about your consultations can deliver disproportionate results.

What do you think?

New Medical Spa MD Products Coming Soon!

There are some new Medical Spa MD products under development for our Members.

I've been exchanging emails with a number of member physicians running medical spas and it has me thinking.

I'll first say that I generally don't like consulting with individual medical spas and don't generally do it. Yes, I've opened seven medspas and, yes, I have helped physicians and trained docs, but I decided long ago that the 'medical spa consultant' is most often a hack, has a terrible business model, and doesn't have any fun. That's not for me.

Many of the emails are general in nature; How can I improve my medspa's website, use patient testimonials, finance my clinic, etc... but there are a few bullet points that stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of where a physician running a medical spa's concerns lie;

  • What technology should I avoid or buy?
  • How can I get the best training in new treatments?
  • How can I improve my business operations?
  • How can I drive new patients and increase my business?

There are a few other secondary contenders but these are the questions most often asked.

We've devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort on providing resources around some of these. You can read through thousands of insider comments in the IPL and cosmetic laser forums to see what other physicians and medical spas think of the technology they're using, or why they didn't buy something. There's also a tremendous number of posts and comments about business operations, marketing, advertising and more than a few about medical training, but I've come to believe that there are also some holes in our offering and some places to improve.

While you can use all of the information on this site to make better decisions, there are benefits to having everything put together in a logical format or product that you can use. While we've been fantastically effective in organizing our members and using our combined group buying power to get Select Partners that offer our Members discounted Botox pricing, malpractice protection, outsourced internet marketing, or postcard marketing there's a lot of insider information that's not so easily packaged up and offered broadly.

However, the feedback that I received from our Medical Spa Training Manuals has me thinking that we should be doing more to offer quality 'how to' products that physicians can actually use to address both their internal operations, and drive more patients and revenue.

The challenge has always been that it's just to much work to take the very best of this information, develop a comprehensive, quality product from it and then train an individual do on how to use it. It's just not an efficient model to deliver individually, without some sort of broader distribution to keep the cost at a manageable level for our Members.

But our growth has now put us in a position that we can scale. ; ) So, about a week ago we decided that we were going to organize and produce a number of new information products to address specific needs for our Members. (If you're not already a Member, join Medical Spa MD here.)

These products are not going to be general information, they're going to be specific 'how to' products that give you simple, plug and play directions that you can implement within days.

Medical spa products that we're working on right now:

  • The most comprehensive medical spa operations manual ever developed that details specific treatments and procedures, from how to answer the phone, to how to handle cash, to up-selling. This one product took me literally 16 months to write (when you see it you'll know why) and I used it in every one of my clinics every day. This isnt' some crappy 'template' that you'll get from a 'consultant' who couldn't make any money with thier own medspa and now wants to tell you how to run yours. This one product will change your medical spa into a real business that gives your staff the tools they need to perform at peak efficiency.
  • The Medical Spa Blueprint. A complete blueprint that speaks to physicians running medical spas or cosmetic clinics. The Medical Spa Blueprint will be a free strategic and tactial overview of the key points you'll be addressing in your clinic.
  • How to drive an extra $120,000 in revenue in one month. Yep. You read that correctly. I'm going to offer a product that's the single most effective revenue producing system I'm aware of. I've used it in every medical spa or cosmetic practice I've been a part of to drive revenue and it's NEVER failed to deliver spectacular results. I've used it to increase monthly revenue at a single clinic by up to $120k without canibalizing existing business. It is BY FAR the single best thing you can do to increase sales. The best thing about this system is that you can use it over and over to actually increase your profit margin with full-price treatments that don't erode your business.
  • Outsourcing for your medical spa. I started outsourcing a number of business functions years ago and have been running businesses with full-time outsourced team for the last five years. Most people give up outsourcing because they spend just as much time managing their team as they did when they were doing everything themselves. But if you do it correctly, outsourcing can free you to work on your business rather than just work inside it.
  • New site for Medical Spa Classifieds so that you can buy and sell your cosmetic lasers and IPLs.
  • New site for Medical Spa Jobs.

These products are going to take some time but as soon as we launch we'll make some general notifications. As always there will be no pressure to buy. If we're offering a product that's not for you, then it's not for you. We'll also be offering Members some introductory offers and additional free downloads that well be available in our Members Only area.

If you've never purchased anything from us (you're not alone), consider looking though the offerings of our Select Partners and making a test purchase. See what your experience is like and compare it with going it alone. We're confident that you'll not only have a better experience that you're having with your existing solutions, you'll be getting a better price.

Our New Facebook Group: Physicians + Facebook Marketing - How to do it correctly!

Join our Facebook group: Physicians + Facebook Marketing - How to do it correctly!

Facebook now has more than 500 million accounts.... and if you're not using it to promote your services and build a community around your medical spa or clinic, you're missing the point.

Rather than just discuss Facebook marketing here on this site, we've decide to actually show you how to do it by using Facebook.

The new group that we just started, Physicians + Facebook Marketing is only a few days old. So far, we've got 30 people to join and we're going to grow this group while showing you exactly how we're doing it... on Facebook.

We'll have a number of our staff who are responsible for our social network marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in this group to answer any questions you may have, or just learn from the case studies and articles.

You'll also want to listen to some of our new podasts since we've been discussing social marketing on there.

As always, if you like the content that you find here on Medical Spa MD, please give us a small pat on the back by clicking the new 'like' button that you'll find at the bottom of each post.  ; )

Follow Medical Spa MD on Twitter

 

Medical Spa MD Members get a Podium patient review marketing account and save $1,257

Protect your reputation. Get new patients. Medical Spa MD Members receive a special, full service Podium account that includes: no setup fee (save $300), a 10% discount forever (save $330/year) and on-demand patient review marketing training for your entire staff ($597 value).  This offer is not available anywhere else.

The New Medical Spa MD Podcast

Medical Spa MD now has its own podcast for physicians and medical spas and the first couple of episodes are now live.

I've been looking to start a podcast for Medical Spa MD for a while now, and we've finally launched.

With each new episode, we'll talk about cosmetic medicine, plastic surgery, cosmetic lasers, clinic operations, management, marketing, sales, treaments, cost controls and everything else you'll want to know. We'll be asking (and hopefully answering) the tough questions. How do different cosmetic lasers compare? Which IPL company provides the best service? How should you compensate and motivate your staff? How to market your clinic? Where to spend your advertising budget? How to get started. How to grow. How to compete. Finally, what does that mean for your business and lifestyle?

To start, we're interviewing physicians who discuss their own concept of personal brand and how they've managed their careers outside of clinical medicine. 

In the first episode we talk to Dr. Greg Bledsoe about the Medical Fusion Conference and his desire to help physicians control more of their career. Greg's speaking from experience here. He's a leader in expedition medicine and organizes his other businesses to facilitate the lifestyle and income that he wants.

In episode 2 we're talking with Dr. Elliot Justin of Swift MD about telemedicine and the efficient delivery of medical services remotely. Elliot talks candidly about Swift MD and how company got started and functions operationally. He's also got some views on the state of US healthcare that resonate with almost every other physician I know.

We've already got another few episodes being edited and a long list of physicians and others who are scheduled to appear. My goal is to get out at least one every other week for the foreseeable future.

This new podcast will focus on providing relevant information for physicians, with a special emphasis on cosmetic practices, techniques, marketing, operations and just about everything you'll want to be aware of the field of nonsurgical cosmetic medicine. While we'll have plenty of physician interviews, we'll also be talking to technology companies, marketing gurus, and others about what it takes to run a successful medical practice, and exactly how to use these tactics and operations inside your own clinic. We'll be providing broad overviews as well as delving down into specific treatments and 'how tos'.

The Medical Spa MD Podcast is a permenant addition. You can find it by clicking on the link in the main navigation at the top the page. You'll also be able to subscribe to the RSS feed directly or subscribe via iTunes as soon as they index the feed.

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. What topics would you like us to cover in the future? What guests would you like us to interview?

Special Offer: If you're a Medical Spa MD Member, I will pay for you to go to the Medical Fusion Conference!

If you're a Medical Spa MD Member and you go to the Medical Fusion Conference, I'll pay for you to go.

There's just a couple of small catchs to this offer. First, you'll need to tell them that you're a Medspa MD Member at the time of your booking to get this deal. Second, there are a limited number.

(Listen to the new Medical Spa MD Podcast, episode 1, in which Dr. Greg Bledsoe talks about the Medical Fusion Conference.)

I'm really excited to have you hear because in this video I'm going to talk about exactly how you can start to take control of your medical career and leverage you medical training in ways that you never thought possible. And then at the end of this video you're going to receive a personal offer from me that's exclusively  to Medical Spa MD Members in which I'm going to pay your way to attend the conference. That's right. I'm so passionate about this conference and it's philosophy that I'm going to personally pay if you attend this conference in Las Vegas. You're going to want to stick around for this.

But first up, let me introduce you to the Fusion Medical Conference while I tell you what's  got me so fired up and energized about it.

First you'll be up for two days of intense learning from physicians who have already made the decision to take their careers in the directions that they choose.  These docs will teach you how they've succeeded, and let you learn from the mistakes they've made. From concierge medicine to  pharmaceutical consulting, you'll learn from doctors who are already walking the walk.

Medical Fusion Conference is about taking control of your career, and your lifestyle. While other conference are packed with vendors and technology companies, Medical Fusion is filled with physicians who have decided to leverage their training and skills to create the career course that they want, from consulting , to writing, to film making. These guys are filled with information that you can use no matter what you current situation is. 

Secondly, Medical Fusion isnt about walking the isles of a sales floor and listening to sales pitches, it's about doing. The difference is glaring. Look, I've been to all the conferences in NY, LA, Miami and Vegas. While the larger expos and conferences are selling you fish, Medical Fusion is handing  you a fishing pole and teaching you how to use it.

Best of all, the thinking around Medical Fusion fits perfectly with cosmetic practices. As a physician practicing cosmetic medicine you need a host of skills, from marketing, to operations. You're in 'retail' medicine after all and the reason that you got in to cosmetic medicine was to gain some control of your practice and your life style. This is exactly the thinking that Medical Fusion is all about.

Ok, so let's talk about what you're going to get and why you'd be smart to step up snatch this offer before it's gone.

You get 2 days of rubbing elbows with physician entrepreneurs who can help you make smart and move your career in the direction that you choose.

You also get this generous bonus of 20 free hours of Category 1 CME credits through ExpedMed, the leader in expedition and wilderness medicine. It's al lot more fun than most CME courses and it's included for all attendees.

But, that's not all. Since you're a Medical Spa MD Member, I'm going to make you an offer that you'd be a fool to pass up on.

If you're a Medical Spa MD Member attending Medical Fusion and you let them know when you sign up, you're going to receive a full month of full service business SEO from Frontdesk. If you haven't looked at Frontdesk before, you should do it right now. There are already a number of Members who use Frontdesk to promote their search engine rankings and market their clinics online. And the business account is Frontdesk's flagship product that they usually charge $1,259 for.

And the reason that you're going to get that free month from Frontdesk is that Medical Spa MD is going to pay for it. That's right. I will pay for you to receive a full month of business services from Frontdesk and it won't cost you a dime.

There are a couple of caveats of course. You'll have to register by phone (866-924-7929) and identify yourself as a Member. And since I'm paying for this out of my own pocket I'm going to limit my total costs to $100,000 retail.  (Yes, I'm getting a discount. No, it is not free. No matter how supportive a business is, they still have to make money and pay their employees as we all know) That means that not everyone who wants to get this bonus is going to be able to.

And since this is my own cash, I'll reserve the right to approve every bonus.  I'll be pretty transparent about this and may publish a list of those who attend and receive this offer.

Lastly, lest you think that I must have some sort of business interest in Medical Fusion to make this kind of offer, not So. I have no business arrangement with the Medical Fusion Conference of any kind. None. Zilch. Nada. I'm making this offer because this conference is awesome and deserves support. That's it.

There you go. This is an absolutely killer deal. If you have any way of putting yourself in Las Vegas on November 5th, 6th, and 7th, do it. Whether you're just getting started, or you fancy yourself a bit of an old hand, you're going to learn how to take control of your career and put yourself on the path to the lifestyle you're looking for.

If you're smart, you'll book right now and snag a full month of Expert SEO services from Frontdesk.

Special Offer Fine Print

The offer I'm making to pay for a full month of SEO services from frontdesk is not part of the Medical Fusion Conference. It's my way of encouraging Members to attend and learn. It is entirely at my discretion and may be withdrawn, amended, discontinued or anything else at my sole discretion. (So don't abuse it.) That being said, you should absolutly take advantage of this ASAP since I'm only going to pay for a limited number of attendees. Yes, you will still have to pay the actual fee, flight and room... but you'll get me to give you a free month of full service SEO from Frontdesk. Get off your duff and sign up.

Need A Critique Of Your Medical Spa Website?

OK, I'm ready to throw some rocks at a few of the medical spa and laser clinic web sites that I'm seeing.

If you'd like an expert (me) to take a look at your web site and let you know what I think about what you're doing right, and where you need some improvment, you can request a review from the contact form. (Just include the request in the body of the contact form.)

I'll review your site right here by making and posting a screencast of my thoughs and digging in to your site's structure, design, functionality and SEO attributes.

You'll get some insight about best practices and things you could be doing to drive additional patient traffic an increase your site's visibility, and everyone else will get to watch.

Request a review of your website >

Do-It-Yourself & Outsource Search Engine Marketing (SEO)

Frontdesk SEO is Medical Spa MD's newest Select Partner.

View the announcement here.

Frontdesk offers do-it-yourself SEO software that lets you use your front desk staff to market your business. (They offer outsource SEO as well.) You can start for as little as $59 a month which is killer.

If you haven't already, run a free SEO report on your website and see where you rank according to the major search engines.

This is the same system that we use at Medical Spa MD to keep our #1 rankings in all of the major search engines and I can't say enough about the back end and how easy it is to use and works eaqually well for any business or web site. And, if you want to kick it up a notch, the have outsourcing options that use their SEO experts to do the work.


Medical Spa MD Members get a Podium patient review marketing account and save $1,257

Protect your reputation. Get new patients. Medical Spa MD Members receive a special, full service Podium account that includes: no setup fee (save $300), a 10% discount forever (save $330/year) and on-demand patient review marketing training for your entire staff ($597 value).  This offer is not available anywhere else.

Social Media Marketing: Part 1

Last week we had a webinar on social media marketing and more than 70 Medical Spa MD Members signed up. I'd expected somewhere from 10-15 so having 70+ surprised me somewhat.

Alex Panagiotopoulos of Freelance MD explains basic Twitter functions for physicians running medical spas, laser clinics, and cosmetic medical practices

We had intended to post the entire webcast but, due to some technology issues, the audio wasn't usable. So, Alex was kind enough to recreate the entire presentation in smaller parts.

We'll be posting a number of 'how to' videos as they're available around social media marketing with easy step by step instructions, from how to set up your Twitter account, to advanced techniques on Facebook to attract followers and promote your medical spa.

This video is the first in this series, Social Media Marketing for Medical Spas: Part 1, Alex goes over setting up a Twitter account correctly.

Setting up a Twitter account for your medical spa, laser clinic or plastic surgery practice. of course you'll want to follow Freelance MD and Medical Spa MD on Twitter.

Plastic surgeons, dermatologists, laser clinics, medical spas, skin clinics and laser centers will all benefit from learning about the newest social media marketing tactics and strategies. Social media is growing and your cosmetic medical practice can benefit from it's growth with Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, SEO and do it yourself search engine marketing.

Medical Spa Estheticians: Learning how to perform laser hair removal

It's the number 1 laser procedure performed by aestheticians in medical spas across the U.S. - Laser Hair Removal. If you're old schooled, 10 to 1 no one ever taught you about laser hair removal procedures.

With facial and chemical peel services on the downfall these days, I've received many emails from aestheticians wondering where to get trained in laser hair reduction so they can secure a position within a medical spa, or just advance their career. Aestheticians are lucky in my area, they have a wonderful beauty academy right at their fingertips where they can get an advanced education in aesthetic services (if they want to go back to school). Their training manual is the Medical Spa Advanced IPL & Training Course, available through Medical Spa MD.

In the Laser Hair Reduction Chapter, you will learn about the anatomy and growth phases of a hair follicle from the anagen phase to the telogen phase and what the significance is of those stages during treatments. You will also learn the differences between and Nd:YAG, Alexandrite, IPL and diode lasers for hair reduction. Other important pearls are skin typing, ethnicity responses to therapy, topical anesthetics and using them safely, patch testing, and information about how various body areas respond to treatment.

If you're looking for a way to get the theory behind laser treatments, then take a look at the Medical Spa Advanced IPL & Training Course.

Author: Paula D. Young RN runs internal operations and training at Young Medical Spa and is the author of the Medical Spa Aesthetics Course, Study Guide, and Advanced IPL & Laser Training course for medical estheticians and laser technicians.

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