How to Use Patient Personas In Your Medical Practice (Personas Part 4)

If you are coming from the previous parts of this series on patient personas, you are probably thinking something along the lines of “great, I have this whole wealth of knowledge now about how to create personas, but this damn buffoon never told me what to do with them.” 

First of all… step your insult game up. Buffoon? In a world where ChatGPT can generate hundreds of better words for you to sling my way, there’s no reason your shade should be so elementary. Tsk tsk. 

Secondly, don’t worry — we saved the best for last. I couldn’t tell you how to use personas before you knew how to make them, could I? Trust the process, because Part 4 is going to break down how exactly you should be using personas to improve your business and marketing metrics. 

Developing Useful Marketing and Business Goals

Before you sit down to write the next great American novel (or the next great social media caption), you need to spend some intentional time figuring out what you are hoping to accomplish. Without this roadmap, it will be impossible for you to measure your persona implementation.

So, don’t skip it. Let’s break this down into four easy steps that you can easily calendar out over the course of a few days.

Step 1: Align Your Marketing and Business Goals

This might sound like a no-brainer, but a lot of medical professionals don’t understand that marketing goals should ultimately support your larger business goal. Let’s take an easy one, for example:

I want to bring in $400,000 additional revenue over the next fiscal year.

This is a business goal. It can be accomplished with help from digital marketing, but it can also be accomplished through other avenues of the business like expenditures, overhead, pricing, repeat customers, etc. 

To make a marketing strategy that supports this business strategy, we first need to identify two things: what digital marketing verticals do we want to invest in, and how much time or money do we have to invest?

Let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, there is no limit to time or money, but we decide our website is the place we want to invest. That makes building a marketing goal easy. Follow the logic:

• I want to bring in an additional $400,000 to my practice through our website.

Break this down:

• I want to bring in an additional $200,000 in ecommerce sales. 
• I want to bring in an additional $200,000 in patient treatments.

Now go even further and find ways to :

• I am going to invest $10,000 into website development to boost patient conversions by 20% and sell 25% more of our beauty products.
• I am going to create highly competitive treatment pages and blogs and hire an SEO to get to the first page of Google for our major search terms.

Now apply your personas and create hyper-specific strategies:

• I am going to create a warm, calm, and inviting website that is simple to use and navigate so that our older demographic can more easily access our site and information. 
• I am going to figure out what dialogue is happening among millennials who are looking for nonsurgical treatments and write SEO-optimized content for those queries.

This is a simplified version of this process, but I am sure you get the idea.

Step 2: Establish Your KPIs

As you move through the process of enacting a specific strategy to meet these goals, make sure you are tracking meaningful metrics for the tasks at hand.

If your goal is to increase your audience size, make sure you are tracking statistics like organic reach and paid reach. How many new patients are you getting from your new ad program? How many people click the ad but don’t convert? How much traffic is your site getting? How are the other stats on your site, like Time Spent, looking?

These are only some of the hundreds of metrics out there for you to consider, and it is important that you find and measure the ones that are most pertinent to your goals. 

Step 3: Get Everyone Onboard

Meeting your business and marketing goals is not an individual endeavor — they should be shared with the team early and thoroughly. Be transparent about what the goals are and what efforts are going to be made to hit them.

Your patients will see a lot more faces than just yours, so if you aren’t getting your entire team involved in the process, you are setting yourself up for sub-optimal growth toward those fancy new goals you have. Don’t be afraid to incentivize it, either — gamify it even. 

Aligning Your Content With Your Personas

Now that you have your laundry list of content to develop and tasks to complete, it's important that you continue to consider your personas every single day. This is often found in the granular details of your marketing collateral, but there are some broad strokes we can break it down into.

Targeting the Right Segments

The first step is to use your personas to craft your targets and the audience you are creating content for. Be intentional about creating content for certain personas. Your blogging program and your social media should use content that appeals to your specific groups. 

One day, you might post a blog about preventive Botox treatment for the younger generations. The next day, drop an Instagram story and highlight about a facelift surgery or injectable fillers. 

Figure out which of the personas bring you the most business, and skew the percentage of content you create toward them — unless you are actively seeking to solicit revenue from some other demographic.

Getting the Right Message Out

We summed this up pretty well in our Incredible Guide to Patient Personas, so I will just drop this snippet from that guide here for your consideration:

Effective messaging and positioning communicate the value of your aesthetic medical services to your target audience in a way that resonates with their needs and preferences. Use your patient personas to inform the development of compelling messaging and positioning that speaks to each persona's unique concerns and aspirations.

Craft persona-specific messaging: Develop messaging that directly addresses the pain points, needs, and goals outlined in your patient personas. This messaging should clearly communicate the benefits of your services and how they can help each persona achieve their desired outcomes.

Establish a unique selling proposition (USP): Identify the unique qualities that differentiate your practice from competitors, and emphasize these in your messaging and positioning. Ensure that your USP aligns with the priorities and preferences of your target personas.

Test and refine messaging: Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your messaging and positioning based on feedback from your audience and performance metrics. Adjust your messaging as needed to ensure it continues to resonate with your target personas.

Finding the Right Channels and Tactics

So, you've got your patient personas down to a T, and you're feeling like the marketing maestro of the medical world after you’ve crafted remarkably relevant content. I am super happy for you. Truly.

But knowing your audience and having content for them is only half the battle. 

The next big question is: how do you reach them?

We’ve created more than our fair share of patient personas for the aesthetics industry, and here’s what we’ve found are the top five most important channels:

1. Website

First things first, you need a website. To be completely honest, this should not necessarily be considered a channel — it is much closer to the actual television, so to speak, since everything could and should ultimately lead back to your website.

Not only is it the only piece of the internet that you can actually own but the sheer volume of people looking for information through search engines is higher than any other platform you could possibly focus on. Plus, when you control 100% of the conversation on your website correctly, the potential to convert someone there over something like Instagram or an email is much higher.

2. Meta (Facebook and Instagram)

The next four channels are all important, and this list isn’t necessarily in order of most important. But, if it were, social media would be a high contender for the top spot, but only if you understand its strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is on social media, so the potential for exposure is the highest of any platform. But the unfortunate part is that traditional social media success (i.e., tens of thousands of followers and amazing engagement ratios) does not automatically convert into more business.

There are a ton of Insta-famous doctors and medical professionals out there in the aesthetics industry who still don’t have full books. Why? The formula for social media success focuses on entertainment and interest — long story short, people viewing the content don’t necessarily have any intention of having treatments performed at your practice; they are just interested in viewing the content.

Nevertheless, social media is like the modern-day phone book. If someone wants to verify that you are in business and are a reputable practice, they are likely going to look over your social media channels, primarily Instagram and Facebook. In fact, 80% of Instagram users will check a social media channel to decide whether to buy a product or service.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing has one unique advantage: people on your email list have either already signed up for treatment or have opted into receiving information about treatment through your office. This means you’ve already done the hard work of winning them over and are now focusing on how to convert their interest into treatment. This is why we typically see a lot of people focusing on email marketing when their primary concern is ROI.

4. Paid Ads

Organic traffic is great, but it takes a long time to get any organic traffic strategy rolling and, unfortunately, nothing is ever guaranteed. Paid ads, however, are guaranteed. You can pay per click to your website, pay for a certain amount of exposure, pay to be put in front of a certain audience — if you are willing to pay, the sky's the limit. Just make sure you’ve done the pre-work (developing content, working through your funnel, etc.) if you want to actually see results. 

5. SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is an extremely difficult channel to get right. But when you do get it right, it is easily one of the most beneficial tools to make use of. Typically, you’ll want SMS marketing to focus on a high-value, high-motivation call to action. Take advantage of a limited time offer, notify your list of a new product that is running off the shelf, offer up a last minute appointment or deal — anything that feels like it would be genuinely valuable to a would-be patient.

Creating Tailored Content for Your Personas

Even if you managed to create a flawless list of how each and every one of your audience members prefers to get their content, it doesn’t mean anything if the content itself you produce doesn’t resonate. This is why you need to be aware of the different content categories and how your personas can help guide the final product that is created in those categories.

Educational Content

Think blog articles, ebooks, webpages, and videos. These aren't just filler content; they're your chance to really connect with your audience and give them the information they're hungry and searching for.

First up, topic selection. Don't just throw out random facts and hope something sticks. Use your patient personas and good, old fashioned SEO research to guide you. What are their main concerns? What questions are they asking? Focus on these areas. If your persona is concerned about post-treatment care since they have incredibly busy lifestyles, then a blog post on that topic is going to explain the process to them.

Next, let's talk voice. If you're targeting a younger audience, maybe a casual, conversational tone works best. For an older demographic, perhaps something more formal but still accessible. The key is to make it resonate with the people you're trying to reach.

There will be lots of details to consider here, but ultimately, it’s just about figuring out how best to communicate with the people who become exposed to your practice.

Promotional Content

Promotional campaigns are like the cherry on top of your marketing sundae. They aren’t the thing you should focus on, but they can really sweeten the deal for potential patients who are on the fence about choosing your services. 

But remember, not all cherries are created equal, and not everyone will care about the same kinds of promotions. So, spend some time thinking about each persona and how you can reach them. 

What do they each value? Injectables? Nonsurgicals? Skin brightening? Drastic improvement? Use these insights to craft offers that will actually excite your target audience. If one of your personas is budget-conscious, a well placed limited-time discount could be just the nudge they need to.

Personalizing Your Patient’s Journey

Think of the patient journey as a road trip. You wouldn't just hand your passengers a map and wish them luck; you'd guide them at every turn. That's where personalization comes in. 

With your patient personas as your GPS, you can make sure each patient's journey feels like a first-class experience tailored just for them.

First on the itinerary: appointment reminders. These aren't mere calendar alerts; they're your first touchpoint in making the patient feel seen and heard. Include the essentials like their name, appointment details, and any prep steps they need to take. It's a simple way to build trust right from the get-go.

Between visits, keep the conversation going. You've got their contact details, so make each message count. Whether it's an email newsletter or a text update, tailor the content to fit the persona. If you've got a persona who's all about anti-aging treatments, a timely article on the latest techniques will catch the attention of people who fall into that category.

And after they've come in for their appointment? A personalized thank-you note can go a long way. Add in some useful resources or a quick survey to gauge their experience, and you're not just closing the loop—you're opening the door for future engagement.

All That’s Left Is to Track and Optimize

You’ve done all the work, and I, for one, am super proud of you. It was no easy feat, but you pulled it off. You developed stellar personas to work with, made useful and informed marketing goals with them, you got your content platforms decided on and even produced content specifically for your personas.

All in a day’s work… right?

Sike. You still aren’t done. Now you have to regularly review your entire program and keep it optimized based on what the many points of data are telling you.

Don’t give me that face, I never said this was going to be easy. I just said it would benefit your practice. Jokes aside, if you do find yourself overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to reach out. We will be happy to walk you through it step by step.