You’ve navigated the first stages of the pandemic and are finally able to look to the future. While you undoubtedly have a backlog of surgical cases eager to be scheduled, right now you have the time and availability to strengthen your own recovery. During this webinar, CEO Ryan Miller explores 6 things you should do now to build the pipeline of prospective patients actively considering you for their elective surgery.
Related Links:
- Essential Questions to Guide Your Re-opening Strategy
- Medical Marketing Resource Center
- 12 Online Marketing Tactics to Help Elective Medical Practices Weather an Unsteady Economy
Webinar Transcription:
Everyone, let’s go ahead and get today’s session started. Again, my name is Ryan Miller, Founder and CEO of Etna Interactive, and we’ll be talking today about building a pipeline of elective surgery patients. Now something that I want to acknowledge, we’ve been at this a long time, our company is 20 years old, and probably the most common refrain that we hear is that honestly what our clinic wants, what our clinic needs is more word of mouth referrals. These are our best, our strongest in many cases, our most numerous source of new patients for the clinic. But there’s a challenge that’s implicit with that, when we weigh the possibility, the power of word of mouth against the impact in the role that marketing can play inside of the clinic and it’s really captured in this question: how do you trigger a word of mouth referral?
How exactly do you make that happen? Now, scaling word of mouth can be difficult and I think at times like this where many of us are contemplating the reopening of our practice, and the possibility that as we enter into the summer and fall that we may not be as busy as we were this time last year, this idea, this question, is really important.
If we roll back, not very long at all, for many of your clinics you were flush with patient opportunity. Depending where you are, we have a lot of attendees on the call today from Canada, many clinics from the U.S., your clinic very may have well been in a position where, thanks to a record-low unemployment, fairly strong economies, in a position where you simply had plenty of patient demand. As a result you didn’t have to focus that much on developing a pipeline, on ensuring that you had a safety net of patients ready and waiting to eventually come into your clinic for surgical treatment.
Unfortunately, with the pandemic and the inevitable reality of coming back into practice during a recession, it’s very likely that it’s going to feel like there’s a break in that pipeline. Our practices aren’t falling into a sink hole, but we’re going to see some kind of disruption, it’s simply inevitable. The challenge of the question that we face today is how do we restore that flow, how do we ensure that we have a healthy stream of inquiries from patients and prospects who are at various stages of their journey? So that we can keep our operating rooms as busy as possible.
Again, if we roll back just a little while, for many clinics I think that the level of opportunity was such, that most clinics focused at the very end of the sales funnel, of the journey that the patient takes. Waiting for the patient to self-identify and say, ‘I’m ready to schedule my consultation’, and I think for many clinics it’s safe to say, most of the energy was focused on the relationship that started from the moment the consultation was requested.
But as we step back and reflect today, we have to acknowledge that there are stages of the funnel that come long before, often years before the patient is committed to requesting that consultation. Where we can start the conversation, build the relationship and ensure that we have a healthy base of patients who are aware of our brand, comfortable with our doctors and our staff, and ready to choose us when they are in fact at that moment the consultation is the next step for them.
If we go back all the way to 2012, in an article that was published by RealSelf, they talked a little bit about the understanding, the evolving understanding, of the journey patients take. In fact, we can go back, looking over 20 years of data that we have and see evidence that for many procedures patients were, as long as we want to look back were, taking anywhere from two to four years between the first time they would visit a clinicians website, researching and learning about that procedure, touching it again over multiple occasions, and then ultimately and finally requesting that consultation deciding to receive the procedure. That journey isn’t necessarily linear anymore. They’re coming back, again and again for answers, for learning, to build the confidence and the reassurance that it’s safe to proceed, it’s safe with the clinic they’ve chose, safe with the particular procedure that they’re interested in, safe with the conditions and they’re lifestyle, and where they are financially.
In that same article, I think the author pulled out a really great quote that many aesthetic consumers, they’re nervous, they’re excited, wait talk about appropriate for where we are today, that we have clients who are actually reaching into clinics saying can you guys please reopen, I want treatment now. But still those patients are anxious about the reality of seeing a clinic in the time of COVID. They’re searching for information and reassurance that it’s okay to proceed.
Where we’re going to focus throughout this short presentation is on six tactics. We’re going to get down and dirty, get in the weeds on what it takes to get this stuff done. Six tactics that are focused on building a pipeline of surgical patients. Now, for those of you that joined us just a couple of weeks ago in our webinar where we talked about, the steps, the processes for reopening, there’s just a little bit of content overlap, but we’re really working here to make sure these are all original ideas and information for you.
1. Create The Confidence to Connect
The first thing that we want to make sure you are doing is creating the confidence to allow and encourage patients and prospects to connect with you. I think we’ve all had this experience in the last few weeks or months where we’ve ventured outside with that mask and gloves in hopes of finding access to a particular retailer, or perhaps walked past a store that we’d frequented in the past, and seen very unclear signals about how we can interact with that business. Maybe there’s a door that’s partially ajar only to look inside and notice that they’re using this opportunity for remodeling, or there’s a sign on the door that says they’re open but the door is locked, or you walk by and the lights are on and there’s people inside and you’re not clear about whether it’s safe to enter. We don’t want this kind of uncertainty for patients who are already at an arm’s length from your clinic. We want to give them very clear messaging about what comes next. More specifically, we want to reassure them that you have a plan.
One of our clients, a medspa that is preparing to reopen as of yesterday, late last week we received this email communication from them, and I won’t make you read the whole thing, really it’s the sentence, or part of the sentence, that I think was the most powerful was this: ‘We’ve created a plan..’ As a consumer that’s that moment where I can catch my breath and go, they’ve got this under control, they’ve got it figured out, but they didn’t stop there. There’s a banner that slides up from the bottom of the site that our team helped them with, a blog post that describes all of the steps they’re taking to ensure a safer appointment experience. They’re eliminating all of the ambiguity for the consumer so for that person who is closer to the bottom of that funnel, who’s at the head of that pipeline, who’s ready to do business now, isn’t wondering how to interact with your clinic.
For those of you that are still struggling, that are working on that plan for reopening, even in the face of uncertainty, even if you do not know exactly when your state or province will allow you to open your doors again, you should be giving communication proactively out to both your website visitors, your email subscribers, your social media constituency about what your plan looks like for when you are allowed to reopen. You may have seen this guide already, we distributed this two weeks ago, it’s fifteen questions that you can work to answer that are going to guide that communication that you’re going to get out there. You can follow that link to download it, and we’ll include that link when we share the recording of this webinar.
Now, you definitely want to take, summing that section up, you want to take this moment in time and make sure that the people who are clearly ready to do business with you because they’re searching, they’re visiting your website, they’re on your email subscriber list, that they’re getting that clear message that you have a plan and what the framework or outline in that plan looks like, even if you’re not yet reopening.
2. Raise Brand Awareness
The second thing that we need to focus on here is keeping your brand top of mind. Now what that means, I think in it’s simplest form, is just that you need to stay active and industrious, I’ll explain that in just a moment, on both social media and in communication with your email marketing list. I think many clinics are struggling with the idea of ‘how do I stay both active and engaged with our followers on those two channels, without being insensitive or tone deaf to the environment that we’re in right now?’ and I want to share just a couple of examples. One of the clinics that we work with in Southern California, ljcsc, used this opportunity to leverage their large following on social media to help raise funds for a local non-profit.
I think we’re all aware right now, as much as our businesses may be hurting, non-profits are struggling even more and are serving some of the groups in our communities that are most at risk, and they used this opportunity to do a matching fundraiser. They promoted it for several weeks directly on their social media. To date they’ve raised over $10,000, this screenshot is from last week, and beat their goal, and they’ll be matching that with their own $10,00 donation, having a huge impact on the organization that needs them. But, creating multiple opportunities to engage with their following and show that they are in fact connecting with people in their community.
I also really love what the team at Quatela Center for Plastic Surgery did, really appreciate Ashley’s creativity here using the pic-collage app that’s out there to stitch together imagery, ‘we miss and love you, let’s meet on telemedicine’, fantastic message from the members of the team promoting the new ways that they’re engaging with patients. What is especially, what you call out about this, is that they are using social media as it was intended, showcasing the real faces of the practice. In this case, the faces of the team, eventually as they’re able to reopen, bringing in the faces of the community that they serve.
We see again here, in their medical spa which is called Q the Medical Spa at Lindsay House, promotion that they’re running to run a contest to reward essential workers, specifically focusing on the nursing community, with a social media contest to enter nurses to be considered to win the prize. A fantastic way to get the community engaged to show their connection with really the people perhaps who need support the most right now, and stay top of mind.
If you’re struggling with how to stay active on social media or need some great creative ideas, we released a couple of guides like how to use blogging, email, and social media right now in a way that’s aware and sensitive, you can just go to etnainteractive.com/diy and gain access to a couple of those guides. Simple, downloadable PDFs that you, or you can share with your team, can use.
The bottom line as we sum up this second point, is that this is your time, your opportunity to either create a campaign, or draft a larger editorial calendar that’s going to keep you in front of your email subscribers, your social media followers so that they haven’t forgotten about you as you begin to reopen your doors.
3. Build Your Base
We want to talk next about building our base. We covered this a little bit two weeks ago, and I know we have a lot of people who are on this webinar for the first time, but I want to walk back over that territory because I think it’s very important. As we go back into reopening, I think more importantly, as we look perhaps a couple of months down the road, many of you will find right now in your clinics that you have at least several weeks to several months of backlog, the patients who were previously scheduled for April or May that you need to push forward. Those people that you talked with in the shelter period who conducted virtual consultations and now are committed to getting it on their calendar, I think we’re going to be busy, very likely most clinics for a little while. But as we look towards the fall, the environment could be very different. That’s the time where we’re going to wish that we had a really big base of people who already knew us, who already knew our brand, who are interested, we knew, in our services and waiting for our messaging and communications.
Really all we need to get is the contact information and the permission to market. Especially for those of you in Canada as we talk about email marketing, on those Canadian Anti-Spam laws, the CASL laws are really important that you follow. Whether it’s your blog, if you’re building an SMS text messaging subscriber lists, followers on social media, or your email list, it’s really just those two things, we need to get people to sign up.
Think about why you’re here. Very often I’m told, email is passé, email is not as sexy as social media, but the reality is, we typically see email outperform social media for most clinics by a full order of magnitude. If you’re a mature clinic and you focus on building that list over many years, you’ve got thousands and thousands of people who are subscribing explicitly to see your messaging. Be sure that you are using both this time to grow that email subscriber list, and that you recognize the potential and power of email. I would argue it’s why you’re here, you received an email invitation, you followed the link, you subscribed.
Now this might be an important time to offer an incentive to subscribe or follow. You can run social media contests where following you is one of the components of entry, you can offer a gift or incentive, or a prize, a monthly drawing for new subscribers to help grow that list size. Certainly we see this everywhere that we go in the online world, specifically retail has lots of examples here. The Crate&Barrel website you see that example on your screen, you can save 10% today, even on furniture, when you sign up to receive emails, and they send you that 10% off right to your inbox.
Consider similar things, where once a month you’re going to draw from new subscribers to receive a skin care gift basket. Or you’re going to, when you subscribe, receive a 10% coupon for any elective service offered inside of our clinic. Right, so opportunities to encourage those that make it to your site, that see your list, to take that next step and give up their anonymity.
For those that are really focused right now on following this advice, on building a list of people who have subscribed to connect with you, we’ve got a great video that’s about a year old now that looks at the top ten ways for clinics to specifically grow their email marketing list. The bottom line as sum up this third point is now is your opportunity to work to grow those subscribers and followers. You’ll be grateful that you did as we get a couple of months down the road, potentially when we’re operating in a different economy with a different density of scheduling.
I want to pause for a second and remind everyone who arrived just a little bit after we started, that today you’ll be able to hear me but I won’t be able to hear you, and for those with questions use the Zoom control panel named Q&A, open that Q&A control box and you can drop me a question during today’s presentation.
4. Attractive Them With a Magnet
The fourth thing that we want to look at is beginning to track patients with lead magnets. I have not actually seen this show and I probably don’t get exactly what it’s about but I was spending time flipping channels the other day and saw and ad for something called ‘Married At First Sight’ which I believe is a show about people who have only interacted online, and the first time they ever meet in person is the day of their wedding. Wrong on so many levels, but it helps me to make a point that very often what I think we see happen, consider your own website and the calls to action, the things you ask of the patients when they arrive. For most clinics, the only, or the primary call to action is to request a consultation or request an appointment. That’s the equivalent of asking somebody who you’ve met, very often for the first time, to marry you! But if we think about the idea that we discussed at the very beginning, that was forwarded back in 2012 in that RealSelf article and I think that we all understand instinctively, is that patients are working through a journey, and that very likely the first time they visit your website could be months or years before they’re actually ready for a procedure. Is it likely that at that moment that that patient is ready to request their consultation? The answer is no. In fact we know this if we just think about the math. Roughly if we look at, for all of the visitors who are coming to your site, roughly 2 to 5% of them will actually fill out a form at any given moment.
So what’s the story on the other 95%? Those are your future patients, and what do we have to offer those people that might encourage them to give up their anonymity and start a conversation with the clinic. We need to offer them something of value. We’re exchanging value with them because what we want is their contact information and the permission to start a dialog. To begin the conversation with them so that they ultimately stay connected with us and choose us for their consultation or treatment.
What are examples of lead magnets? I’ll give you two very simple ones, we could talk about this for a full hour. Commonly what we see are e-books or e-guides that offer extensive coverage or some other useful tool, that are available for download only after the person has entered their name and email address, In this particular case of the example on your screen, we’re also encouraging them to join our email newsletter, there’s that point of integration with the list building that we discussed before, and it’s a signal to the clinic. In this particular case this is a facial rejuvenation guide, clearly, if the person is filling out this form, they’re deeply interested in facial rejuvenation surgery. It’s the only reason that I would take the time to download this guide is if I in fact if had an intense interest in this topic.
At the end of this process, when this form is submitted, I have someone who has given me their name, their email address, they may have signed up to my email newsletter, and they have downloaded a guide that talks all about facial plastic surgery. That’s a lot of information that I can use to develop a relationship.
We use the example here for ophthalmology as well, as an alternative, a different kind of lead magnet. In this particular case it’s a download for a free information kit. We also commonly see in the ophthalmology space, Lasik self-tests, or cataract surgery self-tests where patients can go through and essentially self-qualify that they are in fact good candidates for these procedures. So there are all kinds of models out there where we’re empowering the patient with additional information, additional tools, additional understanding, in exchange for contact information.
It’s the same reason very often why in our own company, why we develop white papers, downloadable assets like the recession readiness guide we put out right as this whole scenario was beginning because we want to know who’s interested in these kinds of topics so we can begin to have that conversation. Somewhere among the list of people who downloaded those tools, will be people who specifically are interested in our services.
Remember that the request for that lead magnet is a signal. It’s a signal that moves them from a lead to a prospect because now we know the procedure they are interested in, we know they’re contact information, and can start a dialog asking them how can we help you with this journey.
5. Automate Nurturing
Let’s talk a little bit about nurturing those leads once they’ve come in, and whether they’re in the lead category or prospect category. How do we address the fact that right now many of us are going to be operating on light staff, we won’t have our full team, and even in the best of times, nurturing the 95% of our site visitors who weren’t ready for consultation was a difficult thing to do.
This is where we often hear conversations beginning about drip campaigns, and unfortunately I think for many clinics, especially those that are engaged in a lot of do-it-yourself marketing activities, it may be beyond your reach to do true drip campaigns. Because as we look at examples of how those campaigns look and how they work, they often involve complex software, you need to do a significant amount of planning and content creation. You’re setting up decision trees where based on how a person responds to one email communication, or downloadable action, you’ll take multiple different pathways forward in how and what you send to that person.
Tools that support this, it’s not a particular drip endorsement, but many of you have heard of Hubspot, many CRM platforms like Salesforce, where plugins can be structured to make this kind of thing happen. But the reality is there’s an easier solution that is, while not as sophisticated, still very effective and for many clinics it’s incredibly inexpensive. They’re called automated email series, if you use for example, Constant Contact or Mailchimp, the upcharge on a monthly basis that’s required to be able to support these is often as little as $25-$30 monthly. Of course there’s going to be time that’s required to create the emails that go into your series, but let’s give you an example because I think it’s a little bit easier to understand when we talk about it visually.
First thing we need to reflect on is who could potentially receive emails series. Of course I’ve given you the example of the group that downloads an e-guide. Let’s say the group that downloads an e-guide about facial plastic surgery procedures, we know that nurturing them with additional information about facial plastic surgery will be helpful. I might look at if I have a landing page, and pay-per-click advertising or social media advertising campaign for eyelid surgery, or facial plastic surgery, I might include them in my aggregate cohort so that that second group of people who qualify because they’re prospects, they’ve expressed an interest, we know what procedure they’re connected to. I might also look at grouping into this as well, prospects who requested a consultation for a facial plastic surgery procedure but didn’t ultimately get back to us when we followed up.
Collectively what I have when I look at these three audiences are patients that have a common interest in facial plastic surgery, but who have not yet committed to the consultation with our clinic. Now I can funnel the three of those and let’s say I wait two days after my initial contact, whether that’s the initial download, completing a form on a landing page, requesting a consultation but not actually booking, and I might have the automated email series send them the first message, which we know everybody loves before-and-after photos, focuses on and links to a blog post of our favorite photo gallery cases. It tells the story of really amazing outcomes and transformations through before-and-after photography. So maybe that’s the first one in our series. This isn’t a rigid prescription, this is just an example to perhaps inspire your own ideas.
Then I wait another five days, and I anticipate what are some of the common problems that people have that might complicate their willingness or ability to schedule a procedure. Well often it’s time, timelines, understanding how long they might be out of work, when they’ll be fully recovered, when they can return to normal activities. Maybe I want to develop a visual blog post or infographic that walks them through the timeline of the most common facial plastic surgery procedures, and gives them guidance on how early they want to request or schedule their surgery based on when they exactly need to be fully recovered.
We’ll anticipate and answer common questions, and each time we’re linking from the email to a resource that’s bringing them back to our site, interacting with our brand over and over again. And then I might wait another seven days, anticipate another common question or challenge that people face which is, how am I going to pay for my procedure. And look at presenting information about common costs, links and information about financing and payment options that are available for those procedures, again to help them answer and address those concerns, reassuring them that they can make it happen. Again, each time encouraging them to reach out for their consultation to start that conversation with the practice.
In the series it’s simply a matter of mapping a new series, developing the supporting content, if you have a blog that becomes a great place for that content to live, and then creating the emails that link back to those posts, and configuring the series in your mail application program. It’s straight-forward, will require a little bit of time to set up, but once it’s set up it’s easy to run and easy to refine.
A couple of notes there, for the Canadians that are on our call today just remember that the Canadian Anti-Spam Law, CASL laws really do require opt-in, so if you are focusing on getting patients onto an automated email series, be sure that you’re including that check box where patients can opt in to your list, and with that you are permitted to both opt them into your general email newsletter list and that same check box can put them onto, with just a bit of configuration, a specifically related series related to their procedure of interest.
Pick one procedure as a starting point and our advice here is deploy a three-part automated email series. For Etna’s clients, our clients that are on the call today, we do have a standard product that addresses this and if you’re interested you can just let your account executive know.
6. Pre-Sales & Patient Stimulus
Now the last piece we want to talk a little bit about here, I’m not sure if this is going to be, probably the least exciting or the least comfortable part of the presentation, but I saved it for last because it is I think an inevitable reality that we do need to deal with, which are the financial pressures that many patients will be facing, and the conversations that will follow that as we come back into reopening our clinics.
Obviously, the news is out there both the U.S. and Canadian governments are making significant investments to try and assist small businesses, providing stimulus in various forms, but the question that we need to step back and reflect on is what’s the stimulus for patients. For those patients that are still working, many are on partial furloughs or working full time but at a reduced salary. Unemployment numbers are massive and payments from unemployment are generally not sufficient to support this kind of elective and discretionary spending, so the climate is going to be very different as we all re-enter practice.
It means that many patients that might previously not thought about or been in search of discounting, may be bringing up these conversations or may have their choices influenced by price more than in the past. So how do we avoid discounting services? I want to acknowledge for some of you on the call, regular monthly discounting is a part of your marketing communication strategy and that’s perfectly fine, but what we find among the majority of our clients in the elective healthcare space is that there’s a strong wish, there’s a desire to avoid discounting. What do we do to get out ahead of that?
A couple of things that we’ve seen already are price considerations or price reductions for patients who pre-purchase. Many clinics are doing this just before re-entry so it is a clear strategy and not an early act of, how it can appear to the outside world, desperation. But a strategy for patients who are attempting at securing investment deals as you know specific reopening dates. This can be accomplished fairly easily, either by having patients call in or by automating it with something like a PayPal buy it now button which are fairly easy to configure, as long as you have a PayPal account. For those of you with ecommerce systems you may be able to set this up in just a matter of minutes.
I would suspect that most of you already had a list of patients who, especially for surgery, were willing to fill last minute vacancies for some kind of price consideration. We suspect that the strategy, I think we’re going to see more last minute attempts to cancel surgical appointments in the next couple of months. Some it will be motivations that have come from fear and misunderstanding, others will simply be practical issues. The caregiver that I expected to come and help me while I was recovering from my tummy tuck isn’t available, my mom that I was planning to help me watch my kids while I was recovering, if she is unable to travel safely I’m not going to be in a position to have that surgery when planned which means that your operations are going to be complicated.
Having a list of patients who’ve expressed an interest or reluctance to move forward because of price concerns with whom you can exchange value. It’s valuable to you to have a fully saturated surgery schedule and for patients that are looking to get on that schedule with just a couple of days, they have that flexibility right now, with just a couple of days notice. Being prepared and tracking those opportunities can help you fill last minute vacancies.
We’ve also seen, and I think this is probably going to be the strategy that majority of clinics default to, are benefits aligned with encouraging patients to join VIP or loyalty programs. Now these were climbing in popularity in the year, year and a half leading up to this point, and often the minimum thresholds for investment are $1000 to $1200 for the lowest tier. Many of those programs include monthly service in addition to discounts on select categories of procedures. For many clinics, depending on your regional guidelines, this is a way to set not a discount but special pricing for clients who have accessed specific programs. So it allows you to stay in line with the law, and give patients an answer when they ask the question, well can you do anything for me on the pricing. Well actually I can when you become a member of our VIP or our loyalty program, here are all of the benefits you maintain, and our VIP program members enjoy a different pricing table because of that membership. It is a fantastic value and for many clinics what we’re seeing is that they are doing a buy one get one, when you sign up with a friend the two of you basically get two memberships for the price of one, equivalent to a 50% discount. Some of them are offering, we see people offering additional months when you join our VIP program now, you get 14 months for the price of twelve, as a way to have a ready answer for that inevitable question, what can you do for me in terms of price.
Let’s wrap up on that final point there, and just are you right now, what are you doing to build that pipeline so that as we get a little bit later this summer, as you’ve worked through the initial backlog, that you are in the best possible position to make this perhaps one of the strongest summers that your clinic has ever seen. I know for many of you in the elective and aesthetic surgery space, this might’ve been the time where you were contemplating taking a vacation with weeks or even months away from the office and I don’t think that’s going to be viable for many reasons. But one of them is going to be that you should be able to develop a fairly full surgery calendar throughout the summer.
Let’s summarize those six actions there. And as a reminder, if you have questions today, use that Q&A control panel, click the link, open the Q&A window, type in that question and we’ll strive to give you an answer.
Be sure that you’re communicating now. There are people who are contemplating coming in for consultation, having a service with you, immediately. They are visiting your website, they are looking at your Google My Business listings. Make sure you’re got a clear message out there, announce that you have a plan, even if you don’t have an opening date.
You need to stay active messaging out to your email list, communicating with your followers on social media to keep your brand front and center.
Use campaigns or incentives specifically right now, to increase the number of followers that you have on both social media and on your email list. You’ll be grateful to have the biggest list possible in just a couple of months.
If you haven’t deployed them in the past, or if you have with success, and you’re ready to expand, bring out new lead magnets. Digital assets that you can offer on download in exchange for contact information from prospects for your clinic. And, create an automated email series with three parts, or you could do two, you could do four, that will nurture the relationship with those patients where you may not have staff with time to have direct, and personal follow up.
Finally, we want to make sure that you have a ready answer to the inevitable questions that will come up about discounting or special offers, and devise a strategy that will minimize your dependence on service discounting.
As we get into that Q&A panel, just as a reminder for everybody on the call, you can click Q&A, type in those questions, we’ll get them answered for you. We’ve got one coming in right now asking me to elaborate a little bit on the three-part automated email campaign. What content, and what time should we send? Let me first talk about where can you do this. Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp are very popular email marketing platforms, offer usually with a small service upgrade, support for automated email series. They’re simply email messages that you design in advance, save, and stitch together in a pre-defined sequence, each with a delay after the other.
Now the question about what content we should share. The best way that I can answer this, now I gave you the example which was a link to a blog post about your favorite relative before-and-after photos telling a story of those patients and their journey. The second one focusing on surgical planning, execution and recovery timelines to help people address timeline or time-sensitivity questions, and then finally talking about pricing. You could really focus on developing any three pieces of content, perhaps you have an existing video about a procedure you want to highlight, a related blog post with information about the emotional implications or talking to your family about a procedure. But step back and anticipation the journey, the questions and the uncertainty that patients feel, and for an individual procedure or closely related family of procedures, I used the example of facial plastic surgery procedures for facial rejuvenation, and develop content that helps assure, educate and advance the interest of patients who are considering those procedures.
In terms of the time, how much time should lapse, it’ll vary by procedure, it’ll vary by market, it’ll vary a little bit with your brand, but typically what we’re talking about is completing all three of those touch points within a maximum total duration on the series of six weeks. The example I gave was actually only a two-week series, 2 days, then 5 days, and then 7 days between the first, second and third email, great question there.
As this webinar, as we wrap this up, just a quick reminder that today’s session was recorded, we will share this within 72 hours, it will be present on our blog but we will email all registrants a copy of the link. We’ll include in there not only the recording, but a copy of the slide deck and links to the resources that we referenced today.
I want everyone to please stay happy, healthy, and safe, and as you contemplate or deal with the reality right now of reopening, that you do so as successfully as possible. Be well.
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