When Your Marketing Goes Too Far: How One Dermatologist Got Suspended for Dancing and Rapping during Procedures

Don't get yourself in trouble by failing to think through what you're doing and how it can damage your clinic and your reputation if something goes wrong.

You may have seen something about the recent case of  dermatologist Windell Davis-Boutté The “Dancing Doctor” who has been suspended for "negligence" after posting videos of herself dancing and rapping while performing surgeries. The physician used the videos to market her practice, where she was seen rapping and dancing, that it ended up having her patients file lawsuits against her with some of them claiming to be severely injured. (CBS article)

To get real for a second, this was a stupid thing to do for lots of reasons. Anyone who has been around for a while knows that it's not if you get sued, it's when you get sued since your patients have been pretty well conditioned to expect perfect results based on their own criteria.

The result: Dr. Davis-Boutté was sued by 7 of her patients and was forced to agree to a 2.5 year suspension of her medical license.

According to Gutierrez and Johnson (2018), there have been other instances like Davis-Boutté’s where physicians are singing and dancing while doing procedures. It causes immediate alarms to go off for patients, as physicians are expected to be focused exclusively on their care and the procedure. 

So what did Dr. Davis-Boutté get so wrong?

1. She wasn't focused exclusively on providing the best care: Patients expect perfection from their treatment and if they're unhappy with the outcome in any way they're going to be looking to the doctor for answers. Any indication that the physician wasn't focused exclusively on providing the best care is immediately going to be the peg on which they're able to hang blame.
2. She turned her patients into props: No patient really likes to be filmed when they're unconscious on the operating table.
3. She made it public: Of course that was the whole idea. These were 'marketing' videos and they were produced and posted online in order to increase visibility for her practice.

While this went completely off the rails from the beginning for Dr. Davis-Boutté, there are some lessons to be learned. Here are a few things Dr. Davis-Boutté could have done to meet her goals without dropping a bomb on her dermatology practice.

1. Use patients only for live testimonials: The social proof of happy patients is probably the best general marketing you can use, but they need to be aware of what they're doing and how it's going to be used. I'd suggest that if you're shooting live videos for promotion that you let patients "sign-off" on the final product before you actually release it. Make sure that patients 
2. It's not about you: Patients want to be treated by a physician who's nonthreatening, caring and personable, and who puts them at ease, but they don't far beyond that because they're focused on themselves. Your efforts need to be focused on them as well. 
3. Focus on what's actually important: There's only one thing that you're looking to have patients think about you if you're performing cosmetic treatments; that is that you're "the best" at what you do. Marketing campaigns that promote you as being the funniest, hippest, or best looking have no place beyond getting some initial interest. Successful clinics focus on outcomes for their patients and strive to earn new patients primarily by word-of-mouth.
4. Think it through: All of this could have been avoided with a few simple "what if" questions were asked 

Below are a number of resources around the ethics of marketing physicians and procedures. In some cases it's a little head-in-the-clouds but remember that cosmetic medicine has really caused headaches for the medical ethics community.

Read more

Continuous Care. (2018, March 15). Ethics of healthcare marketing for physicians and medical practices. Retrieved from https://www.continuouscare.io/blog/healthcare-marketing-ethics-for-physicians-medical-practices/

Cătoiu, I., Geangu, I. P., & Gârdan, D. A. (2013). Applying Marketing Principles in the Field of Medical Services – An Ethical Challenge? Procedia Economics and Finance, 6, 449-456. doi:10.1016/s2212-5671(13)00162-7

Gandolf, S. (2014, July 22). 7 Dangerous Legal Issues to Avoid in Doctor Advertising. Retrieved from https://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/doctor-marketing/dangerous-legal-issues.html

Gutierrez, P. L., & Johnson, D. J. (2018). Can Plastic Surgeons Maintain Professionalism within Social Media? AMA Journal of Ethics, 20(4), 379-383. doi:10.1001/journalofethics.2018.20.4.msoc3-1804

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (2011, November). Women's Health Care Physicians. Retrieved from https://www.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Ethics/Ethical-Ways-for-Physicians-to-Market-a-Practice

Dr. Deirdre Hooper - Audubon Dermatology, New Orleans

Part 2 of our interview with Audubon Dermatology in New Orleans: Dr. Hooper of discusses marketing strategy and staffing.

Name: Deirdre O' Boyle Hooper MD
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: http://audubondermatology.com/

Of Interest: Dr. Hooper is half of of Audobon Dermatology. She's an executive committee member of the Women’s Dermatologic Society, the nation’s 3rd largest dermatologic society. She also serves as Financial Vice Chair of the Women’s Dermatologic Society’s Legacy Council.  

Dr. Hooper lives in New Orleans with her husband and their 3 children.

Kindly give us a background of your clinic.

We have a condo in a medical office building across from a hospital. Being in a medical setting allowed us to become busy very quickly based on referrals from other doctors in the building. We offer a full range of medical, cosmetic, surgical, and laser dermatology. Treating medical patients over the years has fed our cosmetic business-for example, the mothers of our pediatric acne and wart patients become our injectable patients, and they often send their husbands to us as well!

We rented lasers until it became financially more sensible to purchase our own. We now each see about 35-50 patients each per day and have 2 full time aestheticians, 2 nurses who assist with cool sculpting and aesthetic procedures, and a skin care concierge. One of our early hires as an aesthetician has a business degree. As we have grown the practice, she has become more involved in the business and HR end and has now become our office manager.

We are committed to making sure that each and every patient is confident in our care. This means that we will take care of you every step of the way, whether your journey includes skin cancer surgery, skin diseases, lasers, injectables, or anything in between for a high-tech natural rejuvenation. At Audubon Dermatology, we specialize in comprehensive dermatologic care for all ages, skin types, and skin conditions. We utilize a wide array of the most innovative products and procedures to give you the best care possible. We are located in New Orleans but often have patients coming in from around the country to receive our services.

How do you approach staffing in your practice?

We offer quarterly bonuses that incentivize the office goals and behavior we want to achieve. We feel like it’s a great way to positively reward great employees and check in more frequently with employees who may still be learning. We have a policy that employees may not request a merit increase until they have improved on their evaluation scores for 3 consecutive quarters.

It’s important for employees to experience and try the products and procedures in your office so that they can recommend them to patients. However, we have found that not all employees utilize procedures, or they may not understand the value of a procedure or product when given absolutely freely. We offer "Audubon Bucks" quarterly based on very simple and specific measures we expect every employee to complete. If employees call in sick multiple times or are not completing items on their detailed job descriptions, they lose their Audubon bucks, we have found this to be an effective way to avoid giving free services to less effective employees, and to be a great way to allow employees to see the costs and value of services we offer.

Hiring and Firing seem to be the most common struggle we and our colleagues face. We have learned 3 important points: 1) Hire experience for the back, personality for the front. 2) Hire people that you personally like and would enjoy spending time with outside the office. 3) Incentives are not only monetary-appreciation and acknowledgement are just as important.

What are your marketing strategies?

We find that word of mouth is our biggest referral system. We rarely pay for advertising but do focus on our social media. The marketing world is changing, we are constantly trying to grow our online presence.

When we started our practice 10 years ago we had a yellow pages ad. That is long gone as we implemented a tracking module in our EMR and started tracking-how did you hear about us? 95% from my friend or another physician! In recent years, the number of patients who find us by google is growing, so we are sure to keep our website updated and search-friendly and we are utilizing social media, mainly Facebook (including Facebook live), Instagram, and twitter.

We use Constant Contact to email patients about specials and new services. In our office, we have discreet signs on the back of every door mentioning current specials and customized cards that give an overview of products and services we offer for varying cosmetic complaints such as red face, fine lines, or pigment problems. These often generate questions as patients read over them as they wait for us.

We have tried newspaper ads, ads in local magazines, even billboards. None of these have approached the success of internal marketing and social media.

What procedures are most performed in your clinic?

We try and focus on treatments that make a clinical difference. We are always bringing in new devices or products. Staying on top of all scientific and technological advances in skin care and device modalities has been a priority of ours from the beginning. We do track our ROI and if something is not selling we phase it out, but typically that goes hand in hand with new advances that we are upgrading to anyway.

What pearls and tips can you give fellow physicians?

One important lesson is not to let the patient tell you what to do. As we begin in cosmetic medicine, we may want to please the patient, and go against what we judge to be the best cosmetic outcome. We have learned that the patients are there for our expert injections, and also our expert eye. We know what looks best, and they benefit from our knowledge of beauty. Many patients come in and say “whatever you think, Doctor”, but unfortunately not all of them. For those patients we try to educate them, and offer them our best plan for a great outcome. If they cannot see our way, we do not inject them. You want as an injector to be proud of every patient that you work with. Be selective and always stick with what you know is best!

Bio: Dr. Hooper is an honors graduate of Louisiana State University School of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in biology from Louisiana Tech University, where she graduated cum laude. Her postdoctoral training included Louisiana State University Department of Dermatology as well as a Women’s Dermatologic Society Mentorship with Dr. Pearl Grimes in Los Angeles, CA. Dr. Hooper is a Board-Certified Dermatologist with special interest and training in medical dermatology, dermatologic surgery, moles and melanoma, cosmetic dermatology and laser surgery. She is an executive committee member of the Women’s Dermatologic Society, the nation’s 3rd largest dermatologic society. She also serves as Financial Vice Chair of the Women’s Dermatologic Society’s Legacy Council. She is a member of the American Academy of Dermatology and has served on that organization’s Youth Education Committee. Dr. Hooper is also a member of the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery and Louisiana Dermatology Society. Dr. Hooper lives in New Orleans, LA with her husband and their 3 children.

Powerful Marketing For Your Medical Spa: Social Proofing

Increase conversion rates of cold sales emails through social proofing!

Social proofing is a psychological phenomenon which influences someone to think that you are great after knowing that other people think you are great. It is informational social influence where people assume or conform to other's actions in an attempt to reflect the correct behavior for a given situation.

This is useful especially when you are communicating to your potential customers for the first time, as when you are cold emailing them.

Social proof is also notable on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The more followers you have, the more trustworthy and reputable you appear to be.

Product reviews and ratings are relevant for American consumers. Statistics says that more than 70% of them look at product's site and its reviews and ratings before deciding to purchase a product.

Several techniques of social proofing can be utilized, including mentioning in your email the patrons of your product, perhaps a famous company which is also your client, a famous investor, or the person you know in common in the mail.

It shows your potential customer that others have also taken the action that your company wanted them to take, whether purchasing or subscribing. Research shows that when a famous customer is mentioned at the bottom of the email, replies in the cold email doubled.

In a study of 10,000 accounts at a German bank, it was shown that customers who came from customer referrals had 16% higher lifetime value than those who came from other acquisition sources. Social media has sparked dozens of different ways to provide this kind of social proof.

Facebook widgets that show other Facebook friends that “like” a brand, Twitter’s display of people you follow that also follow another person, and the various ways that company offer rewards for referring others to the brand are all examples of this. Perhaps you might also want to mention present customers with established positive reputations.

These influencers are seen more positively with association. A shared LinkeIn Connection may also be mentioned. It was found that when you point out a shared connection with someone in common, 25.5% of the people who received the email opted in to have a further conversation about the product compared to the 4 % who received the basic mail.

Testimonials, accompanied with corresponding faces, are one of the most persuasive forms of social proof out there. Compared to statistics, stories and real-life experiences by other people are more trustworthy and persuasive because these examples touch our hearts and mind.

Optimizing Your Clinics Email Marketing

Email marketing is a good way for businesses to engage both potential and existing customers. In 2015, email users are nearly around 2.6 billion and this is expected to exponentially increase to over 2.9 billion in the year 2019.

Emails are very useful in the business world and as well as consumers - mainly due to its use for notification consisting of online sales.

Further, survey says that 91% of consumers check their email at least daily and 55% of companies surveyed say they generate more than 10% of sales from email.

Data from the Direct Marketing Association reveal that 66% of online consumers made transactions out of an email marketing message.

Email marketing allows you to be efficient. You can save a lot of your precious time after optimizing your autoresponder sequence or your sales funnel. Automation takes over and does most of the work for you.

But first, you have to plan about the results you want to achieve when hatching plans to grow your list. Map out how email marketing can be incorporated in your overall marketing scheme.

So, how do you improve your patient interaction through email marketing?

Start with what you write as a keyword in your subject line. A study shows that those with keywords confirm, features, upgrade, magic and raffle are likely to be reported as spam so it is best to avoid them unless you were able to built up a list that really trusts you and your brand.

Make a great first impression on your new subscriber through the welcome email or the autoresponder sequence.

When do you send them?

Try sending them on days other than Tuesday and Thursday and email your customers between the hours of 2 PM and 5 PM.

MailChimp’s Email Genome Project reveals that more mails are sent on Tuesday and Thursday than any other day of the week so you might want to test sending emails on other days so you will have less competition. This will pave the way for increased inbox space and click through rates.

People are more likely to open their email between 2 PM to 5 PM, regardless of time zone, according to the Email Genome Project.

Where do you link your email?

Try sending your email traffic to a dedicated landing page because this is usually the one that has a higher conversion rate. Also, you might want to include social share buttons in your emails as this can also generate higher click through rates.

Got other email marketing advices? Share them by posting your comments below. =)

Botox Business For The Holidays

It's the time of the year where your patients are confronted with family parties and get-togethers... and it's a reminder that they're another year older. You could be the Santa they're looking for.

Look, you're probably already doing the basics with things like gift certificates and perhaps an email offer, but you might want to take stalk about what you could do to really boost your sales here.

For day spas it's common to do 50% of their yearly sales in December as gift certificates, leading to some very lean months in spring when they have to redeem them all. This can cause serious cash flow problems as clients fill your treatment rooms with no sales. There are a couple of tricks I've seen to deal with this that can mitigate the effects. 

• Selling your gift certificates with some restrictions at a discount. You can stagger your gift certificates so that you push treatments or sessions into the summer or fall. On way is to sell your gift certificates by 'quarter' (spring, summer, fall, winter) with specific dates, then discount the ones farther out. By keeping track of purchases you can see what the discount should be to give you some control over when redemptions come in. Spring would certainly be full price but you might try scaling from 10% to 30% discounts for summer, fall and next winter. The fact that you're giving a 30% discount for a gift certificate that you sell for next winter is more than mad up for by getting payment up front, and the occational "breakage" that goes will all gift certificates.
• Bundling treatments and services. Purse strings generally loosen over the holidays and, if you're not greedy, you can take advantage of this by bundling services that effectively boost your revenues. Tying your normall laser hair removal bundles along with an introductory Botox or filler treatment at a discount can give your patients a sense that they're lessening the cost and risk by getting a deal. (Don't do this all the time lest you fall into the trap of becomong a discounter where that's always expected.)
• Memberships. One of the big moves that can give you regular recurring revenue (what eveyone wants) is to begin offering memberships. I'll go into that in a different post but you should be aware that memberships, while tricky to implement and get right, can dramatically change your clinic into a real business. Memberships allow you to tier your services, create some scarcity, engender a feeling of exclusivity with your high-revenue patients, and give you some vision into your future income. Yep. I'm definately going to have to deal more with memberships.

Create a relationship with your clients this holiday season and use that relationship to keep them coming back. Looking for new customers is more tedious and costly than maintaining regular customers. Gifts have always cemented relationships.  Use this time honored tradition to create some of your own!

Make Sure Your Medspa Staff Meet Their Sales Goals

Technological advancement is all around us. It would be advantageous to make use of all the available online applications and technological trends to reach your clincs sales goals, rather than unduly stress yourself out by not utilizing the available tools at your fingertips.

ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOKS

Using electronic notebooks such as the Evernote suite may come in handy when you do some scheduling, note-taking, and even have effective meetings by presenting your work as it evolves. This app has also a voice recognition feature and even allows you to sketch a whiteboard type image to facilitate communication with your prospective client.

According to Evernote developers, this application allows you to bring your life's work together in one workspace. It also allows you to collaborate with your colleagues and create more opportunities for your team. Also, it has a function which allows you to keep track of tasks, and write notes without the need of the conventional pen and paper.

A comparable application to Evernote is Microsoft's OneNote which allows you to sync and open your notes while using a your computers, tablets and phones. There is also Springpad, an app which is designed to automatically guess what you have clipped from the web or uploaded to your notebooks and then organize it without your help.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

When you would need to generate more leads and reach out to your potential customers, here are some tools that will help you reach your sales quotas: There are tools that allow you to monitor when your brand is mentioned on social networks, blogs, or forums.

The app Mention allows you to monitor your brand presence and even monitor keywords that you want to keep track of. If you have your own Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google account, Buffer is a social media tool that sends your updates to the your social networking sites. It also tells you when is the best time to make updates based on your updates.

Collaboration with your team can also be done so your accounts are up to date. Other tools include Feedly for content discovery, Twitter Counter for tracking the progress of your tweets, and Bottlenose which displays information based on its order of importance.

A provider of marketing intelligence service such as InsideView and Data.com may help you in making decisions about your sale territory because these provide your with valuable marketing data useful in accelerating your sales.

Using these available and easy-to-use technologies may greatly improve your business' performance. With these apps, ease of communication and coordination among you and your members is facilitated, making it easier for your to achieve your sales targets.

Everybody Needs a Marijana – Marketing of Medical Practices in the Information Age

A young doctor asked me the other day how new patients, excluding patients who were referred by other doctors or previous patients, find their way to my practice. We were hanging out in a crowded party in a loud room so I couldn’t elaborate too much, but I managed to belt out one word that would sum it up: Marijana. That is actually the name of the Director of Marketing, Advertising, and Web Presence in my plastic surgery practice – Discreet Plastic Surgery. If you ask her, she’d probably tell you that she NEVER expected to be working for a plastic surgeon. But if you ask me, she’s an integral part of our practice, and should be so for all doctors, especially those in private practice.

As I finished up my training in plastic surgery and went into private practice, I soon realized that free market forces are constantly working to edge me out of the market. Competition is fierce, and people in large markets have many choices in obtaining plastic surgery, as they do in other professional services. A few print ads and radio talk shows later, I further realized that in today’s world, the majority of marketing dollars in a doctor’s practice must be geared towards their internet presence. Even your print ads eventually all end up as PDF files in the “media” section of your website – funny that people still put so much weight on how many times their doctor shows up in “People” magazine. I guess a comment about whether or not Kim Kardashian had a Brazilian butt lift really makes you an expert…

So where do I get started? …you ask. Easy. Just like most questions asked in life these days, the simple answer is: “Google it!” I have no financial disclaimer here so “Bing it” or “Yahoo it” works just as well, and is in fact, recommended as well. Seeing what internet content is out there associated with your name, an old article that you published, a hospital website listing you as a physician, a yellow pages or rate-a-doc style website, or any other peculiar locations, is of paramount paramount. In our office, we started doing our search engine optimization (SEO) by calling each of these websites and online listings and getting all the details right, including linking to our own website. From there, you will soon see how rapidly you’ll be approached from different directions regarding potential help. There’s a huge market for this work, and it rarely goes unnoticed.

As in any rapidly progressing internet-based enterprise, getting someone on your side who knows the tricks of the trade is the key to success. Sure, you can outsource all of these services away, and many do. But, when you add in all the costs of internal office marketing, advertising in a wide gamut of different media, and other costs of brand development, you have a full-time job on your hands. Please beware doctors, stick to doing what you do best. Get an expert on your side. Get yourself a Marijana!

Dr. Daniel Kaufman
Discreet Plastic Surgery