72 to 125 Surgical Consults a Month, in a Recession

Where He Was

A good surgeon on Avenue Road in North York. Skilled, experienced, the kind of results that should have had a waiting list. His website was stale, his marketing company was producing nothing he could point to, and the economy was tightening around everybody.

The symptom showed up on the phone: the front desk was meeting resistance to the consultation fee and the cost of surgery.

What We Found

The recession wasn’t the problem. A recession doesn’t stop patients from buying. It makes them pickier about who they buy from, and weak positioning gets punished first.

His positioning was weak. Nothing about the brand or the website told a woman why this surgeon was worth more than the one across town, so by the time she called, price was the only thing left to compare. The front desk was then being asked to defend a fee the marketing had never justified. That was the block: a brand that couldn’t carry its own prices, and a phone that gave them away.

What We Did

We rebuilt the brand from scratch so the practice could stand for something beyond one doctor’s name. We redesigned the website with content that sold instead of described. Then we ran everything: search, paid search, email, direct mail, social. All of it pointed at one job, which was getting the right patient to the phone already convinced he was worth it.

Then we fixed the phone. We trained his staff to position the practice and handle fee objections instead of apologizing for the number. Without that change, every campaign we ran would have been pouring into the same leak.

What Happened

Surgical consultation bookings went from 72 a month to 125. By Allergan’s own numbers, BOTOX sales rose 83% year over year and JUVEDERM sales rose 1,200%. By the time our work with him ended, he had an 8-month waiting list.

All of it in a recession, while competitors were cutting budgets and blaming the economy.

The lesson we’d want you to take from this one: if your consults are flat and your agency is pointing at the market, look at what happens on your phone first. The ads were never the block here. We’ve written about the mechanics in cosmetic surgery consultation conversion. If it sounds like your practice, see how we approach plastic surgery practices, or find out if yours is a fit.