Alex Ask

Clinic digital marketing specialist Alex Bugg answers your questions

Q: MY WEBSITE IS OUTDATED AND SLOW, HOW CAN I MAKE IT FASTER, OR DO I NEED A NEW ONE?

A: We all know how fast the internet moves. If your current website doesn’t serve your visitors, it definitely needs attention. Generally, if your website is three to five years old, it would be considered old and will probably be relatively slow. Design trends change quickly too, so the trendy animated site you invested in three years ago may well now feel clunky and be a nightmare to use. A website that serves its visitors is:

• Quick to load

• Great-looking whatever size screen it’s viewed on

• Accessible for all

• Easy to navigate

• Generates leads with simple contact options

A slow website will lose your clinic money because in this day and age, visitors just click back if it takes more than a couple of seconds to load. Search engines also penalise websites that are slow or have lots of people clicking away from them by ranking them lower down in search results, so you become stuck in a downward spiral. Sometimes a refresh behind the scenes, such as optimising images and videos, rearranging the navigation and updating the content to reflect your business in its current state, is enough to give your site a bump start. There are free tools available that will check the speed of your pages and give you feedback; and we always recommends using these before investing in a new site. You should absolutely act on this though, because with new clinics opening almost daily, can you afford to lose a patient to a competitor clinic because your website isn’t up to scratch?

Q: WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM IS THE BEST FOR AESTHETICS?

A: There are two answers to this question, and I don’t think either are the silver bullet for marketing an aesthetics business.

Answer one: the platform you feel most comfortable with. Why? Because you’re familiar with the platform and are engaged with it, and so you’ll be able to use it to the fullest extent. Answer two: the one where your target patients spend the most time. We all know clinics with little or no social media presence, and if this is you, and your diary is fully booked on referrals, repeat business and a website that pops up locally on Google, who needs to spend more time on distracting platforms? However, if you’re going to invest your time and/or money into social media marketing, you need to just jump in. There is no singular “best” platform for medical aesthetics businesses, but the most common social platforms for UK businesses in general are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Then you have LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Reddit and more... We’re in the image game, so using a more visual social media platform, i.e., Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, makes it easier to show (rather than tell) your message.

However, there’s no reason why you can’t find success elsewhere. My advice if you’re thinking about becoming active on more platforms is to invest 80% of your time into what works and spend 20% of your time doing something new. It can be frustrating when you’re “stuck” on a small number of followers, but 99.9% of businesses don’t win overnight with social media. It’s a long game, but one that will eventually pay off.

ALEX BUGG

Alex Bugg works for Web Marketing Clinic, a family run digital agency, which specialises in medical aesthetics. They build websites and deliver marketing campaigns for doctors, nurses, dentists, distributors and brands. Contact her: alex@webmarketingclinic.co.uk or follow her on Instagram: @webmarketingclinic