Why membership matters and is something you should consider for your medical aesthetic business.
Memberships and membership packages have become extremely popular and a successful patient retention tool in the medical aesthetic industry. They contribute to building your brand and patient loyalty as well help to cover your businesses overhead expenses within the first 6 months. Afterall, on average, members of a medical aesthetic clinic spend 44% more than non-members annually and 76% of patients consider themselves a ‘lifetime’ patient after their 3rd visit[1].
If you are growing your medical aesthetic business with a continuous focus on the next generation of customers then a membership is something you should consider. According to the latest research, 78% of millennials prefer a membership model pricing, while 68% of patients want an ongoing membership for aesthetic treatments. To target different customer audiences, memberships can be presented in levels such as “platinum, gold and silver” and can range duration and price for your target demographics.
How to create a successful membership program?
Having a coordinated sale process and understanding the WHY behind your membership is the key to selling memberships.
Patient retention is your WHY when is comes to memberships. Understanding the WHY at every stage will help your staff and your patient’s engagement of membership. Why would a patient buy your membership? Why would your staff offer this membership to a patient?
Memberships allow your patients to commit to selfcare every month even if they are not able to visit the clinic monthly to uptake on the products and services you offer.
Ways to address the membership with patients:
- Maintaining great skin health is a commitment that needs to be consistent.
- When closing with a patient only highlight the membership options.
- Highlight that the patient will save x amount today by purchasing the membership and if they pay now, they won’t pay later when they come in for their appointment.
Marketing your membership: Make it a big deal, throw a launch party for your membership and get the word out and build your brand awareness.
Focus on key touch points such as emails to current patients, social media to advertise to current and potential new patients, signage at your clinic, staff t-shirts and give aways. The goal is to create a consistent and constant communication with your patients. Get Creative! Create awareness at your clinic through staff pins or stickers, flyers, picture frames and banners.
How do you get your membership started and off the ground at your clinic?
Start by training your staff and incentivizing them: This can be a done during your regular staff meeting, by highlighting the focus of selling clinic memberships and offering a $50 commission for each membership sold within a certain timeframe to the individual who sells it.
To help close the fiscal year in sales, offer an incentive for staff such as attending a trip away to an upcoming conference or industry event or maybe a team dinner and drinks. *Tip: Try to offer incentives that are not monetary in value but instead offer a larger perceived value for the staff member or create a special and memorable experience.
Use loss leader products and services to upsell costly products or services: This is an opportunity to combine higher and lower selling items together in memberships package in order to upsell and attract new customers to products or services they have not yet tried. In this strategy you can use this to offer lower selling products or services, to upsell bigger ticket items.
Exclusive membership events: Offer exclusive membership pricing events for customers a couple times a year. These events can host vendors who provide in-house demonstrations of products and services, offer discounts on product purchases as well as gifts with purchases, gift baskets and giveaways. Its about an exclusive offering to allow members to feel like VIPs at your clinic.
Roll over option: By offering an option within your membership to roll over any unused services or points you will reduce membership cancellations. Customers love to treat themselves to services and by letting them enjoy any unused treatments the year or month following, you will keep them happy.
Family discount option: Generate new customers and clinic referrals by offering a membership family member discount.
Offer an incentive for the customer to purchase your membership: For example, each gold member receives: 150 units of Botox or 1 Syringes of Filler or a free IV therapy of their choice. Think about creating urgency and need for your clients to join your membership as soon as you launch it.
*Remember, your membership program should be about creating value for your clients and optimizing patient frequency as well as loyalty and retention.
