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Anticipating the direction of the internet is no easy task.
If it were… if some modern-day Nostradamus was hiding in a dark, dank room with a desk full of monitors, crusty instant ramen cups and bone-dry energy drink cans, who suddenly came forth like a musty Jesus preaching the eternal fate of the world wide web…
Well, they would have a larger cult following than Charles Manson, Taylor Swift and Lululemon combined.
But hyper-caffeinated Nostra-daddy aside, we don't need supernatural prediction abilities to draw reasonable connections and recognize some pretty obvious (and other not-so-obvious) patterns.
And, if you look closely enough, there is an unlikely leader at the forefront, helping to shape the future of the internet: video games.
Gaming has been at the forefront of the internet since technology has allowed it. Its influence has already shaped much of its fabric in many ways — and it will likely have even more substantial impacts in the not-so-distant future.
If you are on the internet, and especially if you want to know what kind of new developments your digital marketing will likely be up against in a few years, it's in your best interest to pay attention to the trends that video games and gaming culture have and are impressing.
Why Should You Care About the Internet?
Whether they like it or not, the success of your practice relies heavily — and in today’s world, almost exclusively — on your utilization of the internet. So, naturally, understanding where it's going, and how to take advantage of it in order to drive traffic and gain patients is paramount.
What Shifts Have Already Happened?
To understand where we are going, you have to understand where you came from… or, you know, however the saying goes. The point is video games have already impacted the way we do business and operate on a day to day.
Don't believe me? Check these out.
Gamification Marketing
One major shift that has already happened is the adoption of gamification marketing. This marketing strategy uses game mechanics and concepts to engage audiences and drive desired behaviors.
For plastic surgeons and aesthetic medical professionals, gamification marketing is a powerful way to educate and incentivize patients to take action.
One example of this at work is RealSelf's rewards program, RealSelf INSIDER. Most aesthetic professionals and potential patients are familiar with RealSelf; it is a website that provides information and reviews about plastic surgery procedures and providers.
But the RealSelf rewards program goes one step further by incentivizing patients to leave reviews and engage with the website by offering them points that can be redeemed for discounts on procedures or products with their partners.
By gamifying the process of leaving reviews and engaging with the website, RealSelf has found a way to mobilize its audience into action while paying a $149 annual fee.
Plastic surgery practices have also used gamification marketing to incentivize patients to refer friends and family. One example is the "Refer-a-Friend" program many plastic surgery practices offer. Patients are incentivized to refer new patients by offering discounts on future procedures or other rewards.
Using gamification marketing to incentivize patient referrals in this way can increase your patient base and revenue.
In addition to loyalty programs and referral incentives, gamification marketing can also be used to educate patients about procedures.
For example, a plastic surgery practice could create an interactive quiz or game that tests the patient's knowledge of a specific procedure. The final prize is a screen that allows the subject to schedule a consultation.
Something like "Congratulations, you finished the quiz and know the basics about X procedure. You are ready to schedule a consultation to see if X treatment fits your goals!"
This engages the patient and helps them understand the procedure in a more memorable and interactive way.
Live Streaming
Live streaming has become a popular tool for plastic surgeons and aesthetic medical professionals to connect with potential patients on social media, allowing them to share updates and engage with a live audience in real-time.
The concept of live streaming started early on in the internet's history. There is a famous story about the first live stream being invented by two researchers at the University of Cambridge to monitor a coffee machine.
The non-negotiable need for computer nerds to have a "regular and dependable flow of caffeine" is technically responsible for the innovative idea of video streaming in 1995.
While video streaming will be used increasingly more often throughout the 15 years, the implementation of the technology for video game sharing would ultimately be responsible for quickening its mass popularization. (That is, at least outside of large entertainment networks or super geeks.)
Justin.TV, a website launched in 2007, allowed people to stream their daily lives, events or anything anyone might be interested in watching.
On the heels of vlogging and YouTube hype, Justin.TV became a popular platform quickly, but most popular streams were related to video games and players.
In 2011, Justin.TV decided to focus exclusively on gaming and rebranded as Twitch.tv. Since then, Twitch has become the leading platform for hosting video game and IRL (in real life) streams, with over 140 million monthly active users.
Other social media platforms soon followed suit, adding and retrofitting live-streaming capabilities to their apps.
Alright, quick pause.
Let’s be completely transparent here and address the elephant in the room: there is something that early live streaming and every teen boy with an AOL account had in common…
…porn was a huge part of their (search) history.
It would be unfair to credit solely video games with the momentous leaps in technology without also recognizing the immense impact that the pornography industry also had and continues to have on live streaming popularity.
The internet was, in every sense of the phrase, being doubly penetrated.
Anyway, I digress.
Ecommerce
Video games have significantly impacted the development of ecommerce, particularly through subscription-based services.
Subscription-based services, which offer access to a range of products or services for a monthly or yearly fee, have also been a popular ecommerce model many video game publishers have used for years.
Examples of popular subscription-based models in video games include:
- World of Warcraft: The game has offered a monthly subscription model since its launch in 2004, allowing players to access its content and features.
- EA Play: The subscription service, launched in 2020, offers subscribers access to a library of EA games for a monthly or yearly fee.
- Xbox Game Pass: The subscription service, launched in 2017, offers subscribers access to a library of Xbox games for a monthly or yearly fee.
Pinpointing the first subscription-based service ever to exist is difficult, as the concept of subscriptions has been around for centuries. However, in the context of internet technology, one of the earliest subscription-based services was America Online.
AOL was launched in 1985 and provided users access to online content and services for a monthly subscription fee. At the time, the internet was still in its early stages, and many people were unfamiliar with how to access it. AOL made it easy for people to get online and provided them with a range of services, including email, chat rooms, and, you guessed it, online games.
As video games became more mainstream, charging for access to things like online play and extra content became commonplace. In this case, specifically, it's true that video games may not be able to claim total dominion over the subscription model. Still, they played a significant role in shaping the norms for online subscription services.
Today, hearing that a medical aesthetic practice is offering a subscription for access to a certain amount of treatments per month would not raise any eyebrows. In fact, it is even considered generally good marketing practice.
What Shifts Are on the Horizon?
Now that we know how video games have shaped up so far, what should we expect in the future? What new developments are causing waves for the tech gurus of today? How will the medical aesthetic and plastic surgery industries adapt video game technology to improve their bottom lines?
As I said about 2,000 words ago, there is no nostradamus.exe program here to figure it out. But, as someone with an average set of eyeballs after substantial glass correction, a few million words of aesthetic content under his belt and a history of losing too many hours of sleep over video games…
I have a few ideas to share.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) technology creates a simulated environment that can be experienced through a headset or other device. While VR technology has been around for many years, it has only recently started to gain traction in the medical industry.
The concept of virtual reality can be traced back to the 1960s when computer scientist Ivan Sutherland developed a device called the Sword of Damocles, which projected a 3D image onto a screen mounted on a headset.
However, it was in the 1990s that VR technology became more widely available to consumers with the launch of products like the Nintendo Virtual Boy and the VFX1 Headgear.
Today, VR technology has advanced significantly and is being used in a variety of industries, including entertainment, education, and healthcare. In the medical industry, it is used for myriad applications, including training, patient education and pain management.
Virtual reality also has the potential to revolutionize the way medical aesthetic practices operate, particularly regarding patient education and consultation.
VR technology can provide patients with a highly immersive and interactive experience that allows them to better understand their condition and the treatments available to them.
And it can be taken advantage of from your office or the comfort of their own homes. (A comforting thought for many people in a post-COVID world where we are becoming more accustomed to digital life in their health and employment.)
One of the most immediate implementations would be the ability to simulate procedures and treatments, allowing patients to experience what it's like to undergo a procedure before actually going through with it.
This can help to alleviate anxiety and fear and make patients more comfortable with the treatment process, likely increasing the number of conversions from your consultations.
Additionally, VR technology can be used to create highly detailed 3D models of the human body, which can be used to educate patients about their condition and the effects of various treatments. This will also help to improve patient comprehension and engagement, leading to better outcomes and satisfaction rates across the board.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital information onto the real world, typically viewed through a mobile device or AR headset. It can be used to create highly interactive and immersive experiences for patients, similarly to how virtual reality can also be used.
It’s also been popularized largely due to the demand for virtual and augmented reality video games. Not to mention that key information being displayed directly on your peripheral vision sounds exactly like a video game HUD, or heads-up display.
One example of AR technology that medical aesthetic professionals could use is the concept of smart glasses. Similarly to your smartwatch, smart glasses would provide essential updates and notifications directly to your periphery.
Unfortunately, the technology for smart glasses still isn’t quite there. Google Glasses were shut down recently and Echo Frames aren’t really anything more than a $200 or more way to talk to Alexa.
But, ideally, the differentiating factor is that a pair of the ideal smart glasses could, one day, also serve as an augmented reality device, showing information like directions or other information.
For medical professionals, smart glass technology could greatly impact your operations.
Ideally, you could access patient information and medical records hands-free, allowing you to listen to what your patient is saying without turning your attention.
But it can also be used to provide your smart glass-equipped patients with crucial information during a consultation.
Blockchain
Blockchain technology is a decentralized digital ledger that records transactions securely and transparently. While it is primarily known for its use in cryptocurrency, blockchain technology has the potential to hugely change the way commerce is conducted in not only the medical aesthetic industry but all digital commerce worldwide.
That's a lofty claim for some lofty technology.
Today, blockchain technology is used for a variety of applications, from cryptocurrency to secure data storage. One of the most popular applications of blockchain technology is the use of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are unique digital assets stored on the blockchain.
The image above is an example of an NFT illustration from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection that is currently listed for 2,121 Ethereum, or roughly $3.87 million. While the digital image can be reproduced infinitely, the digital ownership of the original version tracked and protected on the Ethereum blockchain is what purveyors are paying for.
(We won’t go into the details of NFTs in this article. You can ask your local NFTbro for that information.)
But it is important to recognize that NFTs share many similarities with a huge part of modern video games: loot drops. Both are unique, non-replicable digital assets that have implicit ownership and can have real-world value.
In video games, loot drops are often traded or sold within the platform it was generated on or even on third-party marketplaces for huge amounts.
Some items sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, which showcases just how normalized the concept of digital ownership is becoming in the eyes of the public, specifically in the eyes of gamers.
In short, your current and future potential patients will be more comfortable with the idea of digital ownership and blockchain verification because of their similarity to loot drops in games.
How Blockchain Can be Applied to the Medical Aesthetic Industry
One potential application of blockchain technology in the medical aesthetic industry is the implementation of NFTs. Medical practices could offer NFTs as rewards for specific procedures or services, which could be traded, sold on a marketplace or redeemed for certain treatments or procedures.
This can incentivize customer loyalty and engagement while providing new revenue streams and marketing campaigns for your medical practice.
In addition to NFTs, there is some conversation about using blockchain technology to securely store patient data and medical records. This includes the notes from physicians and even the data from personal medical devices, which are skyrocketing in popularity.
“…Within a blockchain, all blocks are replicated in the network nodes and not in a single server. This decentralized architecture acts as a structural defense against the risks of data theft. Blockchain technology guarantees the security of recorded information. These records are said to be immutable: once stored, they become reserved forever and cannot be easily changed…”
MDPI Study, 2022
Privacy is far from a new conversation in the medical industry. People don’t want their information available for hackers and bad agents to find, so they could transfer that information from their smartwatch or other internet-connected medical devices to you using secured blockchain tech.
As the Internet of Medical Things (yes, this is an actual term, and yes, it is lame) continues to grow, people will expect that kind of data security.
If you want to stay competitive, you will likely have to adapt when the time comes... preferably before you take any hits to your bottom line.
Prepare for Your Practice’s Digital Future
Technology is… uncertain. We can take our best guess and read the writing on the wall about what trends are here to stay, but at any moment, some breakthrough can happen and change the way our world operates.
Your practice, if you want to stay relevant, needs to be adaptable. If you feel like you need some help making sure that happens, we got you covered. You can give us a call at (800) 949-0133 or schedule a one-on-one. Our Incredible Educators are here to help you, anytime, for free. We got you, fam.