New Beauty, FOOLISH Cosmetic Surgeons… & Others of their “ilk”

Have you ever seen New Beauty magazine?  It’s a good one.  But — and I’m sure their publishers wouldn’t like this next comment — it seems to have one purpose: To make you feel dissatisfied about your current appearance and point you in the direction of some surgery or filler or injection or product -based help.  =)

And listen… this is fine by me.  I won’t be buying it for my daughters, of course,  but any Cosmetic Surgeon who doesn’t spend the $28 necessary to “gift” their former patients with this subscription is a fool.  WHY?  Well, because this is a target market willing to spend money on their appearance.  AND, as a surgeon, you have TWO choices. You can either WAIT for them to feel a need for more work….. OR you can be part of catalyzing that need. A regular dose of New Beauty is a perfect way to “educate” patients into “needing” more work.

Please ignore your misgivings about cosmetic surgery, self esteem, etc. That’s not the point here. I’m talking about something that can and should be instructive for all of us.

You see, we all have two choices when it comes to our target market.  We can:

1) Wait for our target market to see and recognize a need for what we do. (Very RE-active) OR

2) We can deliberately educate them INTO that need. (Very PRO-active)

When we choose the former, we FIRST wait for them to diagnose their own need & solution, and THEN…. we hope that when we show up — with all of our competitors — via the yellow pages or web search or whatever, that they choose us.  When we choose the latter, we:

1) Educate and serve them so that we help them connect their need with our solution.  Even those who don’t choose to work with us will still walk away more knowledgable and informed.

2) Show up ALONE, and circumvent all of the searching for solutions from your competitors.

After all, you’d agree with me that YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS often don’t think they NEED you, right???  Following this strategy, you can show them THAT they do and WHY they do.  In doing so… you can LITERALLY create an almost competition-free-zone for your business.  And THIS– by far — is my preference. Here’s  how it plays out in businesses other than cosmetic surgeons:

Interior Design.

Interior Designers can either wait for corporate clients to  DECIDE they want a redesign, and then — with all of their competitors — bid on the job.  OR They can begin doing some strategic content marketing that aligns REDESIGN goals with the company’s bottom line business goals, and show up alone… a preferred and trusted advisor.

Same concept for Graphic Designers.

Financial Services Industry (banking, insurance, financial planning)

These financial industry professionals can EITHER wait for people to decide they need more insurance, or an investment plan. OR They can begin educating ideal markets INTO the need for what they sell.

You get the point, right?

How can YOU be more pro-active about attracting your clients? If you KNOW that with just a bit of education, your ideal market can come to their own recognition of their need for you, why not create a way to build this education and content into a strategic marketing plan?