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How to Host a Successful Event at Your Clinic

How to Host a Successful Event at Your Clinic

Sometimes all it takes is a great before and after picture of what SharpLight can do to convince a potential client that we have what it takes to help them reach their goals. Other times, however; it takes a concentrated effort, time talking with knowledgeable staff members, tons of information and/or a bit of wining and dining to make a sale.

Whether you want to present your new clinic in an open house, generate leads or simply show appreciation to existing customers, one of the best ways to do this is with a clinic event. Events at your SharpLight clinic will help you interact with clients, sell the benefits of your services and give them a reassuring human face to go with our state-of-the-art technology.

To get the most out of your event and set your clinic up for success, here are our top info and tips for hosting:

 

Include Your Staff in the Planning

To be successful with any business endeavor, your whole team should be involved. Basically, your clinic will only look as prepared as your least informed staff member. This is why you should plan a staff meeting at least 3 months in advance of the event and discuss these topics:

  • Staff Member Roles: This is the time to get down to specific details of who is in charge of things like designing pamphlets, ordering enough refreshments for walk-ins, scheduling appointments, etc. etc. If you don’t assign specific roles (or put someone in charge of assigning roles!), when things don’t get done, the blame falls to the owner, so don’t underestimate the importance of delegation.
  • Ask for Suggestions: More heads are better than one! And this is especially true when planning a clinic event. Each of your staff members sees different areas of the business and should be relied on to give informed suggestions of what clients want and need from your event.
  • Budget Needs: While you will need to spend money to make it (more on this in a minute), you also need to be realistic in what your clinic can afford. Moreover, staff members should know what the limits are, so they can create ideas accordingly. It makes no sense to allow for open suggestions when you have a cheeseburger budget and your staff is coming up with a filet mignon menu.
  • Finalize a Plan: While it can be tempting to leave dates and times open ended when you are still several months away from an event, things will run more smoothly if you can nail these basics down right away. Once the date and time are picked, your staff will have an easier time scheduling for that day, ordering supplies and setting up all other needed components because they will have a clear date to work towards.
  • Discuss Purpose: There are a wide range of reasons for you to host an event, including: holidays, customer appreciation, grand openings, announcements of new services, educating clients and much more. Consider exactly what you want to accomplish and work from there.

 

Marketing and Promotion Considerations

Marketing is a key component of a successful clinic event. No matter how great your services or event is, it simply won’t matter if people don’t know about it. Your marketing options will depend largely on your budget, goals and timeline, but here are some basic ideas you should employ:

  • Evaluate your target markets. For example, are you trying to reach existing customers, customers who haven’t used your services in a long time or new markets entirely. Who you’re trying to reach will determine how you reach them. Customers and customer leads who are already in your database can be targeted through email, phone calls, etc. while generating new leads is likely to use other tactics like social media advertising, print ads and other online marketing methods.
  • Incorporate social media: Social media is the elephant in the room for many companies and you need to know how to deal with it. Start talking about your event several months in advance to gain critical impressions leading up to the big day. Also, incorporate hashtags and encourage people to use it to spread the word. #LookingSharp
  • Contact influencers and bloggers: you can’t do it all on your own and you don’t have to. Research bloggers and influencers in the cosmetic surgery and aesthetics disciplines to find people who can promote your event to a new audience.
  • Employ evites: Social media platforms like Facebook have given us an effective and easy way to invite people to events and get quick responses from them. Other independent invitation platforms like Evite are also useful.

 

Don’t be Afraid to Spend

As you start to tally up the costs for promoting your event, potential catering at the event, paying for staff and presenters, printing informational materials and on and on, it seems you’re putting out an endless stream of cash without a guarantee of getting it back. While your budgetary limits shouldn’t be ignored completely, this is a necessary part of the process for making your event a success.

Having a subpar event that is understaffed or has little value to clients is almost guaranteed to fail. You are likely to get less customers if you don’t promote it well enough and if the event itself is lacking, those who do show up are unlikely to get services or provide a referral.

To put this into perspective, you could half-heartedly create an event for $500 and get $0 return on your investment. You might think you’re lucky to have only lost $500, but consider the fact that if you spent $5,000, you could double or triple that amount in lead generation, return customers and referrals. So, what’s more upsetting, losing $500 or losing $5,000?

That being said, not all events have to be extravagant to be successful, however; your budget needs to match your goals. If you’re main purpose is to simply get potential customers in the door to receive information on your services, you primarily need a staff member there to answer questions and written information at the ready which an be done fairly inexpensively. However, when trying to generate sales quickly or attract high-end clients, your tactics may need to be a bit bolder and that means putting out money to make money.

 

Follow-Up

Just like with SharpLight treatments, your event will be more successful with proper aftercare. Now is the time to:

  • Discuss what went right and what could use improvement. Seek suggestions and reviews from staff and clients to see what they liked and didn’t like about your recent event.
  • Schedule meetings within one to two weeks of the event to get the best and most accurate feedback.  These meetings can be done in person with staff and over the phone or through email with other attendees.
  • Use the information you collected from clients and potential clients during the event. Email them with promotions and other follow up materials.
  • Analyze profits and regroup to start planning for the next event. As the event and information are fresh in your mind, now is the best time to start considering what’s next and how you can make the next event even more successful.

 

Use Your Resources

SharpLight is dedicated to success of each of our partners and to ensure that, we have a wide range of marketing tools, tips and materials available to help you attract and keep customers. To learn more about what SharpLight can do to help you market your services and serve your clients better, contact us at 1 (866) 513-7797.