Whether you’ve just set up your new aesthetics clinic and you want to know where to start your advertising, or you’ve been established a while and want to attract more business, focusing your aesthetic marketing efforts on local channels is always a good idea.
After all, the majority of your clients will live or work nearby.
So how do you go about it? What’s the most effective way to advertise your clinic locally? And should you prioritise offline marketing over online marketing?
Let’s find out.
1. Don’t choose between online and offline advertising
Focus on both.
Marketing your business in person, at events and through local magazines and newspapers is a great way to get your brand out into your area. These offline channels are still highly effective.
But so too is local SEO marketing – and PPC – where you target your efforts at the online channels that are extremely relevant – and extremely successful – for local businesses. Both online and offline advertising should be a part of your marketing plan.
Your website is always a good place to start.
2. Get your address on your website…
The quickest, simplest, and arguably most important piece of online marketing you can do for your aesthetic clinic is to make sure your address is on your website.
Ideally you’ll want to include your location in your about and contact page. You might also find there’s a place to add it in your website account details (if you’re using a template builder like Wix, Squarespace or WordPress).
This will help Google identify your location, and use it to recommend you when prospective clients are searching in your area. If you want to go a little more advanced, take a look at your local schema markup.
3. ….and make sure it matches on your social media profiles
Alongside your website, you should make sure your full address – postcode and everything – is added to all your social media profiles. Every ‘about’ section you can find.
Again, this will help search engines find and recommend your clinic. You could also add it to local business directories too, like Yell, Yelp and Freeindex. As well as publishing your clinic to anyone searching for aesthetic businesses in a specific area, these sites also provide valuable backlinks, which will help with your local ranking on Google.
4. Create a great Google My Business page (and get on Google Maps!)
Google. The biggest search engine in the world, and one that delivers specific local search results to prospective customers – by featuring relevant businesses on Google Maps.
You definitely want your clinic to be on there.
To do that, you’ll need to register a Google My Business page (if you haven’t already), and verify your physical location with a pin number that Google posts out to you.
Then you can start building your Google My Business profile, adding key information about your clinic, listing services and opening times, and getting reviews. It’s one of the 14 must-know strategies in our FREE ebook – Marketing your Aesthetic Clinic in 2023.
5. Give Google Adwords a go with a small location radius
Once you’ve optimised those online channels with all your location details, the next step you could try is a Google Adwords – or PPC – campaign.
With paid search, you can target all the relevant keywords your prospective clients might search for when they’re looking for the kinds of treatments you offer. But more specifically, you can set an exact radius for where you want your adverts to appear.
You might try 5 or 10 miles from your clinic’s address. That means that only people searching in that area – your local customers – will see your PPC campaigns, so don’t have to worry about wasting money displaying your adverts to people in Aberdeen when your clinic is in Brighton.
6. Brand the outside of your clinic and get road signs up where you can
Moving offline, one of the most important, most visible advertising channels for your clinic is right outside it. Your shop front and the road beside it.
Spend some time – and budget – making sure your clinic is eye-catching. It probably already looks stunning on the inside, but it’s easy to forget about the exterior. Big bold signs promoting your brand will get the attention of prospective local clients.
As will road signs, like A-frames or long banners. If you’ve got suitable locations near your clinic, consider investing in all-weather signs that will make drivers and passers-by take note of your clinic, and any special treatments you offer.
68% of consumers believe that a business’ signage reflects the quality of its products or services
7. Attend local fairs and events
Those road signs will help spread the word. So too will local events. Word of mouth is likely to be really important to your clinic’s success, so make sure you get out into your local community as often as you can.
Find out when there are local craft fairs and set up a little demo stall. Go to charity events and donate prizes or services. Any place where you can get your clinic’s name and brand in your local area is an opportunity to attract new local clients.
8. Explore local media publications
A lot of towns and villages have small, dedicated publications – like monthly or quarterly magazines, booklets and directories – that are a great place for your clinic to be featured.
They’re often run by local volunteers or small, local firms, and they only want to include local businesses. You could buy an advertising space – which is often extremely good value – or volunteer to write an article providing some skincare or beauty advice to all local residents.
Both are great ways to put your name into the minds of the local residents who have these publications delivered straight to their doors on a regular basis.
9. Try direct mail marketing in one key catchment area
If you want to take letterbox delivery one step further, then our final tip for offline local advertising for your aesthetic clinic is to try some direct mail.
That could be a flyer, a letter or a leaflet drop. It’s a little bit old school, and usually associated more with takeaways than anything else, but there’s a reason local takeaways continue to do it… it works.
Don’t believe us? Checkout how Seaside Dermatology (a dermatology clinic in South Carolina) managed to capture 300 new patients for a cost of just over $4,500, by leaflet dropping 15,000 addresses in their local area.
Get your design and message right on a flyer, and it could easily be picked up by the right prospective client and popped on a table – reminding them of your clinic every time they walk past.
9 effective local advertising tactics for your aesthetic clinic
Focus on the online tactics to boost your local presence in search results first, and you won’t need to spend a penny of your advertising budget. A presence at local events and some new signs to promote your business won’t be too pricey either.
Then when you see how effective local marketing is, you can try some paid search or local media adverts.
And if you’re looking for more ways to promote your aesthetics business this year, don’t forget to download our FREE ebook or:
