Advice for aspiring musicians can actually be applied to medical aesthetic practitioners looking to change their branding tactic
Although the world of clinical aesthetics can seem a million miles away from the apparent glamour of being a successful musician, developing your brand and engaging with your audience has many similarities. In a world full of similar clinics selling similar products, how will you stand out? Derek Sivers, the Founder of CDBaby.com, is regarded as a guru in both the technology and music worlds, and has compiled some inspirational guidance that can be applied to any venture.
How do prospects perceive your clinic?
The way in which you present your brand and what patients know about it completely changes how they perceive it, so have some fun with marketing your brand and express who you are! Be considerate to your prospective patients—give them something different and exciting.
Every breakthrough comes from people you know
Personal referrals are a powerful way to grow your business—you are not anonymous to that person anymore. You have passed through a filter and passed a test, so you will be treated differently because it is a personal referral. Try to make a point of meeting new people, even if it is just for 5 minutes. This will help build a personal connection to them as they have met you face to face.
Don't be a mosquito
A mosquito's sole purpose is to suck blood from whoever is in the room. People do not like mosquitos, and, understandably, avoid them. It is important to meet people and get to know them. Ask them questions, learn what they love and what is hardest about their job and listen. Then, figure out what you can do to help them. Small gifts can be particularly effective for people that are underappreciated and make them more inclined to help you later on (for examples, chocolates for the ward clerk/receptionist). You need to give to receive.
Keep in touch
Everyone you know has the potential to help you, so, by keeping in touch, you can stay in their mind and, hopefully, opportunity will come your way. If you do not, those opportunities will drift away—out of touch, out of mind.
You need to take this seriously and create an automatic system to keep your contacts warm. Consider labelling everyone like this:
- A list: very important people. Reach out every 3 weeks
- B list: important people. Reach out every 2 months
- C list: most people. Reach out every 6 months
- D list: demoted people. Reach out once a year to make sure you still have their contact details.
When you reach out, it should be unselfish and sincere in caring about how they are getting on. Most people are so bad at keeping in touch that they will appreciate you doing it. Why should we put the effort into doing this? Keeping your contacts warm enables you to ask for favours, and people like the ego boost and the feeling of be connected. Do not ask for a favour unless you have been in touch recently though, as that can be a little insulting.
Being persistent is polite
When we were teenagers, we learned that if a person does not reply when you try to contact them, then they do not want to know you, and if you keep trying, you risk being seen in a negative light. In the business world, the opposite is true: when you stop trying, that is when the negative image comes in. Consider two scenarios:
- Someone does not reply, so you get upset and decide they are ignoring you. You resent them and speak disparagingly for months afterwards
- Someone does not reply, so you assume they are too busy. You try again, and if there is still no reply, you decide that they must be swamped with work. After a few more attempts, you try to reach them a different way.
Which of the above is polite, and which one is rude?
Life (and your career) is like high school
High school was all about cliques, popularity and being cool, but when you went to university, the focus soon shifted to academic achievement. Many people left university thinking that the world would be just like that: the harder you work, the more you will be rewarded.
Sadly, it is not. The real world is about how social you are, how you come across, how likeable you are and what ‘scene’ you are in. However, this can work in your favour. You can be your idealised self by attending certain events and be the kind of person that people look up to and want to help. The aesthetics industry is about glamour—so live up to it a bit and express yourself.
Get your promo kit ready
Prepare in advance for the things that people are going to ask you for. Create a folder on your computer called ‘promo’ and add the following about you and your brand:
- The best portfolio photos of your patients, yourself and your logo
- A biography written as long-form, perhaps a page or two, similar to a CV. This will rarely be used, however
- A medium length biography of two to four paragraphs, the most that people will read on-screen
- A short biography: one great paragraph
- An engaging one-liner
- One big file containing every review you have had, along with who wrote it
- A file containing your best reviews.
This ready-made promotional pack will make selling your brand painless in the future.
Get a good team behind you
Moby, a famous dance artist, was once interviewed by a journalist who asked him how he became far more successful than other aspiring artists who were just as talented.
Moby said, ‘While they were pasting up flyers to promote their next gig, I just put that same amount of energy into finding a great team: a manager, agent, publicist and label. Then, while other musicians just kept gigging, my career took off because of my team’ (Sivers, 2018).
While you might be tempted to try to do everything for your brand, your success will be dependent on how you can scale up your brand. That is something you will not be able to do on your own if you want to make your business a real success. Start by becoming a competent novice in most things, then hand it over to an expert to take it further. You can do anything, but you cannot do everything.
Be in over your head
Being ‘in over your head’ is being in a place where it's too deep to stand, and therefore too much to handle. However, if you want to grow, that is where you need to be. Maslow wrote, ‘Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defence) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): make the growth choice a dozen times a day’. Needless to say, this applies to your brand: do not take clinical risks!
Conclusion
Although the aesthetics industry and music promotion are very different, developing a brand/image are very similar. Cultivate and grow your contact base, live up to the persona your prospects expect you to be and have some fun.